LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 



THE 



Commonwealth Reconstructed. 




CHARLES C. P^CLARK, M. D 







NEW YORK: 
A. S. BARN ES & CO., 

CHICAGO & NEW ORLEANS. 
1878. 



~z\\ 



Copyright, 1878, by Charles C. P. Clark. 



STEREOTYPED 

BY THE 

NEWBURGH STEREOTYPE CO. 



V 



PREFACE 



MANY readers, I am well aware, will claim that the ac- 
count of the present state of our politics that is con- 
tained in the following pages is partial and overdrawn. I 
shall admit the justice of the criticism, but only in the sense 
that the redeeming features of the situation are not equally 
presented with the condemnatory. But to do that did not 
belong to the purpose that I had in view in that description, 
which was to show that the condition of our political affairs 
is too shameful and calamitous to be willingly submitted to 
by an intelligent and virtuous people. In doing this no ex- 
aggeration has been practiced ; and none was necessary. 

The justice of my representation will be the more readily 
disputed because there seems, just now, to be a lull in the 
storm of our political afflictions, which sanguine and superficial 
observers readily take for a lasting change in the weather. 
But, while I am ready to believe that the public business is 
more honestly conducted to-day in the majority of our capitols 
and city halls than it was in 1 870, I can see no ground for ex- 
pecting that the amelioration will be permanent. Particular 
enormities may never be repeated, but the species is the native 
and inevitable product of our present political system, and will 
multiply in number and variety till the defects of that system 
are corrected. Moreover, no improvement whatever appears 
in the competency of the men who are put in charge of the 
public interests. 



4 PREFACE. 

Nevertheless, the topic in the ensuing discussion where I 
have most failed to satisfy myself is this very matter of setting 
forth the existing state of public affairs. The sketch is not 
only scanty, but broken, unskilful and most incomplete. But I 
console myself with the reflection that, as no painter was ever 
yet able to spread upon the canvas the common brute land- 
scape in all its variety of motion, form and color, so must 
literary art forever fail perfectly to portray the complex, ever 
changing and innumerable phenomena of political society. I 
comfort myself also with this ; that intelligent readers will 
easily be able, by recollection and the conclusions of reasonable 
analogy, to fill out the picture. 

Oswego, N. Y., August 28, 1877. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



CHAPTER II. 

OUR DEMOCRACY A PARTIAL FAILURE. 

Section I. — present behavior of our political system . 

Section II. — our condition is deteriorating ..... 

Section III. — whether our institutions are working as well as the best 



CHAPTER III. 

CAUSES AND REMEDIES THAT HAVE BEEN SUGGESTED 



38 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED 



60 



CHAPTER V. 

A NEW SYSTEM OF ELECTIONS . 



I IO 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE PECULIAR FEATURES OF THE METHOD 



Il8 



CHAPTER VII. 

THIS SYSTEM THE TRUE SCIENCE OF POLITICAL SOCIETY 



154 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



ITS CORRECTIVE EFFECTS 



PAGE 
I70 



CHAPTER IX. 



ITS CREATIVE VIRTUES 



187 



CHAPTER X. 

CAN IT BE BROUGHT INTO USE . 



206 



THE 

COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 



CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



POLITICAL institutions are not the first necessity of man- 
kind, nor the chief. Personal wants are earlier and more 
pressing than any that belong to the neighborhood. Compared 
with clothing, food and fire, roads, laws and punishments are 
an after thought, and a convenience merely. So the sexual 
and family instincts, which draw after them so many activi- 
ties, long antedate the thought of politics. But, while thus 
a secondary matter to the individual, civil government is the 
very cradle and anchorage of society, and alone makes possible 
the concord and cooperation that are essential to the progress 
of the species. Its importance increases with time. Of few 
and narrow offices at first, it has constantly augmented their 
number and scope, encroaching more and more upon individual 
autonomy, and more and more affecting the general welfare. 
When its operations extend, as they do now in this country, 
from the repair of a neighborhood highway to the building of 
a railroad across the continent, and from the education of child- 
hood to the bloody conscription of war, its influence on human 
happiness outstrips hyperbole. 

Compared with the philosophy of politics, therefore, all 
other philosophies — the analysis of mind or the classification of 
matter, the problems of religion or of morals, the weighing of 
atoms or of planets, chemistry, mechanics, aesthetics, history, or 
whatever other inquiry has ever occupied the attention of men — 
is of but mean account. To study on these while that remains 



8 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

unsettled, is to be busied with the ornamentation of a home 
whose very foundations are still insecure. 

Throughout history this august arena has been the perpetual 
scene of strife, uncertainty and disaster, 

" Where eldest night and chaos hold eternal war, 
And by confusion stand." 

The mutual slaughter of conflicting interests ; the devasta- 
tions of pride, resentment, jealousy and ambition, among indi- 
viduals and nations ; reason and humanity constantly violated ; 
fraud crowned with success and incompetency with advance- 
ment, have given to the story of political society a prevailing 
sombre hue. Bright spots are now and then, and here and there, 
apparent, but nowhere can be seen the wide and long continued 
prevalence of concord, prosperity and truth. 

Also have spontaneous growth and peaceful change in sys- 
tems of government been almost unknown. Not the painless 
metamorphosis of healthy development, but rather the cruel 
surgery of vivisection is the customary spectacle in this theatre 
— or even self-mutilation, as though nature, insane or insensi- 
tive, warred with herself. 

The evils that are generally laid to the conduct of politics, it is 
to be remembered, are by no means all that belong there. Many 
of them reach us so indirectly that their true origin is undetected, 
while many others are so widely prevalent as to be easily taken 
for a part of the scheme of nature, and therefore inevitable. 

With the progress of time the turmoil of political society 
rather increases than abates, as keeping pace with the growing 
extent, numerousness and complexity of social relations. 
Each integration begets new differences, and every contest 
broods of contests. There is no movement of populations, or 
lagging of race behind race ; no forward step of knowledge or 
conquest of art, nor even any fresh effort of religion or philan- 
thropy, that does not awaken new contentions, and call for a 
fresh adjustment of powers or rights, between nations, neigh- 
borhoods, sentiments, interests and callings. 

Such is the disorder of the scene that what is spoken of as 
the Philosophy of History is little more than the history of the 
philosopher's own mind. The science of political society, by 



INTRODUCTORY. 9 

the confession of its most renowned expounder, Mr. Herbert 
Spencer, has still little other basis than heaps of statistics, 
which, like clay in the hands of the potter, can take any form 
and illustrate any conceit. Thus far, it must be admitted, the 
boiling ocean is the truest type of politics to human under- 
standing. That this surge is lifted by the last it is easy to see, 
but the general array is an incomprehensible tumult. If there 
be, deep down, some tendency " to law, system and order" — 
as the Gulf-stream beneath its storm-tossed surface still bears 
with steady current toward the polar star — its latitude and 
direction are as yet undescribed. 

Of this also can governments be justly accused: that, con- 
sidering their mighty powers, they have done little toward the 
advancement of society. Not the general welfare, but its own 
security and promotion, has been the chief aspiration and 
employ of political power. Seldom has it done more for civ- 
ilization than to occupy what private undertaking had con- 
quered. Neither equality of rights, enlarged liberty, humaner 
laws, material prosperity, nor any other of the many benefits 
that now surround us, was conceived in the nest of authority, or 
took first wing from its exalted verge. Their sperm has come 
from private loins, they have been nourished up by private as- 
siduity, and launched by private daring. Not Parliament, but 
Wilberforce, Clarkson and Zacharay Macauly, made freedom 
universal throughout the British Empire. Not the State, but 
Dewitt Clinton, was the father of our canals. 

Moreover, the student of history is forced to doubt whether 
the art of government is really making much progress. In all 
that concerns political construction and administration the 
devices of the present age are little more than scholia on the 
methods of antiquity. Hardly will any modern state dare to 
boast over Rome, whether as regards its home system or its 
colonial, its Senatus Populusque of authority, its military roster 
or its civil code, its adjustment of duties or of rights, its ma- 
chinery of movement, or its buttresses of security. Certainly, 
there is nothing now going that either so fully accords with the 
spirit of the age, or so effectually endows society with power, 
as the constitutions of the states that twenty centuries ago 
rose and fell along the coasts of the Mediterranean. 



10 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

Take the matter of municipal business, in which political 
skill has as fair a scope and as complete an exhibition as 
anywhere : it would be hardihood to deny that Rome or Car- 
thage was better watered, drained and paved, considering the 
mechanical attainments of its era, than any modern metropolis ; 
or that in the free cities of Italy and Germany, three centuries 
ago, the common welfare was as well watched over as it is to- 
day in Manchester, Lyons, Berlin, New Orleans or Brooklyn. 

What progress in politics have the republics to the south 
of us made since their beginning? or what we ourselves? Or 
what has been gained in Europe to the cause of peace — prime 
object of social endeavor — since Sully's time? If, in this 
Christian day, a temple stood to Janus for the region over 
which Rome ruled, it would be as seldom shut as it was under 
her pagan gods. More civilized blood has been spilt in sense- 
less war within these last two decades than in any other equal 
period of recorded history. 

At the very best, political society, in the language of sailors, 
is still in the doldrums, becalmed or baffled. If there be any 
forward movement, it is so slow that to await its work is like 
watching while autumnal rains wash down the mountains to 
the plains. At the rate we go it will surely take far more than 
the two hundred years of Carlyle's prediction to put society in 
good order. 

In one particular the art of politics seems absolutely to re- 
trograde. More now than in the time of Lucullus or Oxenstiern 
must the bystander be shocked, at least in this country, by the 
spectacle of small men in great station. 

A forcible inculpation of all existing systems of government 
is to be found, also, in the difficulty and delay that improve- 
ments in political business constantly meet with in spreading 
from one community to another. Every well informed man 
can point out cases in plenty where one public matter is bet- 
ter managed here, and another there ; but the attempt to trans- 
port a political amelioration from one community to another 
meets obstacles almost as great as what separated Dives from 
Lazarus. If the very elixir of political life were somewhere 
found out, and its recipe published, it would be an eternity, as 
things have gone, before surrounding nations would arrive to 



INTRODUCTORY. I I 

drink the inspiring draught. In other fields of human skill no 
worthy invention lacks quick recognition and employment on 
every side. Thus politics remains a medley, while the chief 
principles and practices of chemistry, engineering, and all the 
like, are uniform throughout the world. 

It is further to be noticed, that, throughout history, the 
several forms of government have been perpetually interchang- 
ing, without much other law of precedence than chance, or 
ground of favor than success. There is hardly a country or a 
people that has not tried them all, and, often, over and over 
again. Within a century France has been thrice a republic and 
four times a monarchy, tinctured each time, in always different 
degrees, with aristocracy and hierarchy. This very generation 
has seen a majority of the thrones of Europe cast down, and set 
up again, as it were between two days. Even in the most ad- 
vanced communities the several native forces of politics appear 
to be playing at leap frog. To-day the spirit of reform mounts 
over the rest, to-morrow conservatism, next day capital, and the 
day after brute numbers, or high striding personality. In every 
department of politics cast-off styles come back to be used 
again, about as frequently as the fashions that women wear. 

Whether one form of government be better than the rest 
history still leaves in doubt. Each of them has its benefac- 
tions to boast of, but each is also shamed by the record of too 
many mean, weak and wicked deeds, to warrant a lordly air. 
The best argument for any one of them is the shortcomings of 
the rest. If the past have any instruction, they must all some- 
where be greatly lacking. France, which has some claim to 
be called the focus of modern political life, has tried them 
all repeatedly within a century ; has found in all equal insecu- 
rity and disaster ; and hangs to-day on the verge of some un- 
known abyss. Surely a machine that should work so ill, and 
fly so often into pieces as political contrivances have, would be 
condemned by every good mechanic. 

This testimony of facts to the incompetency of all existing 
forms of political construction is but what reason would ex- 
pect. Not here will I discuss democracy, either in its princi- 
ples or its customary methods ; but, surely, its ancient and only 
logical opponent, the hereditary rule of monarchs or oligarchs, 



12 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

is a thing that nature and common sense revolt at. No more 
can be said, as Franklin remarked, in favor of hereditary prin- 
ces, than in favor of hereditary professors of mathematics. 
The idea is, at best, but the " go farther and fare worse " sug- 
gestion of expediency. That the many should be the heir- 
looms of the few were not so incongruous in Homer's time, or 
in Japan ; but for the liberty-loving German race, whose 
portrait in the pages of Caesar and Tacitus promised so much, 
and which has so long enjoyed the benefits of Christianity 
and the printing press, nothing could be more disappointing. 

It has been imagined that in some such distribution of au- 
thority among kings, lords and commons as the constitution 
of Great Britain presents, is to be found the natural adjustment 
of political society. But many congener populations on the 
Continent have tried a like arrangement with very poor results. 
It is not to this, nor to her copious mines, her fertile soil, her 
steady clime, or her supposed superior stock, that England 
owes her long prosperity, but to the fortification of the sea. 
Had she been joined to the Continent, and stood elbow to 
jostling elbow amid its various tribes and states, her politics 
would be as uncertain and unsuccessful to-day as that of the 
most forlorn community in Europe. It is only this isolation 
that has saved her industry, wealth and freedom from the re- 
peated disastrous trampling that France and Germany have so 
often suffered from foreign powers. 

Certainly the British constitution can lay small claim to be 
considered a system of government that much accords with 
reason or nature. It is full of solecisms against both. Its fig- 
ment of royalty, its vestige of hierarchy, its House of Lords, 
seated half by heirship and half by promotion, and its mon- 
strous inequalities of democracy, form an inconsistent and in- 
coherent farrago at which philosophy can but smile, and which 
nature refuses to father. To the eye of skill it looks like an 
ill-sorted museum, where all about antique fragments are set 
side by side with the newest inventions. To see how lacking it 
is of correspondence with universal principles, it is only neces- 
sary to consider how utterly impossible it would be to set it up 
in Canada, Australia, Mexico, France, or this country ! Whom 
should we make king, or duke, or lord bishop? However 



INTRODUCTORY. 13 

good that system of political authority may be for the Brit- 
ish, no other people are likely ever to enjoy it. It is in fact 
but the mixed result of a long series of casualties and make- 
shifts, the like of which can by no chance anywhere occur again. 

Always political society has seemed to bear within itself the 
seeds of its own decay. Humanitarianism, its present liveliest 
inspiration, threatens the degradation of the whole race, by 
aiding the weak, the wicked, and the diseased to propagate 
their kind with a refreshed fecundity. 

On the whole, it is difficult to see what guaranty there any- 
where is against a continuance of the periodic disastrous revo- 
lutions that have heretofore characterized the career of nations. 
It is by no means clear that printing, railroads, telegraphs, and 
the many other material inventions that have of late so greatly 
advanced individual welfare, have much conduced to the good 
behavior of government. Certainly the railroad has not, in 
this country ; and it is doubtful whether the newspaper has. 
All such things are the weapons of the worse, as well as of the 
better elements of society ; and perhaps but tend, like the mus- 
ket in warfare, to bring base qualities nearer to a level with high. 

Germany is confident in herself to-day, but, if Barbarossa 
has indeed returned, may he not go back? Who will guar- 
antee a decade of tranquillity to any nation on the Conti- 
nent of Europe ? Great Britain has long been studiously em- 
ployed in rebuilding and replanting : but will her new towers 
stand faster than her old? or will her planted orchards of 
larch and chestnut outlive her native oaks? What will her 
new-born grimy democracy spare, in that near day when her 
various mines, with all the occupations that depend on them, 
shall begin to fail ? or her industry outgrow her commerce ? 
I know not what warrants our own belief in the permanence 
of this republic. To-day seems sunshiny ; but there was a bad 
storm yesterday ; and there may be a worse to-morrow. Surely 
he who lately looked so struck with death that they who stood 
around exclaimed with one accord : " Lo ! now he breathes his 
last," can make but doubtful claim to immortality. A hundred 
years is no great longevity for a nation. 

It is this troubled aspect and clouded outlook of political 
society that chill the hearts of old observers like Hugo and 



14 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

Carlyle, and turn into apathy or moroseness the cheerful earn- 
estness of youth in humanity's cause. It was this that silenced 
the eloquence of Kossuth, and made Garibaldi hide so long in 
Caprera, wrapped in his faded flag. It is this that makes many 
weaker minds demand the abolishment of all existing political 
institutions, as the only road to general justice and content. 
Indeed there have been times in the present age, and in the 
most enlightened countries, when, to every man of feeling, it has 
seemed far better to seek the solitude of the wilderness than 
to take part in the bloody sustentation of political institutions, 
or, watching aloof the cruel struggle, to bear the pangs of 
wounded sympathy. 

Viewed the high importance of civil government, the med- 
ley and unsatisfactoriness of its past career, its present slow 
amelioration, if there be any, and its dubious future ; and re- 
membered, also, the wide intellectual activity of the present 
age, it looks a little strange that, hardly since Aristotle, has the 
fundamental inquiry of political science been less prosecuted 
than it is at present. We have plenty of disquisition on the 
past, criticism of the present, and prophecy about the future ; 
and no end of petty patching of laws, charters and constitu- 
tions ; but the prime question of how to organize the body politic 
seems to be pretty much dismissed. It was more studied in 
the free states and cities of Italy three hundred years ago than 
it is now in all Europe. I recall at this moment but two or 
three suggestions towards its solution by contemporaries of 
note ; and these all from the fertile soil of French political in- 
vention. Comte proposed a sort of political hierarchy — and, 
as some critic remarked, would have been burnt at the stake 
by his own priests. Taine would divide society into layers, 
whose political power should vary according to interest and 
desert ; but how to distinguish these castes, he does not ex- 
plain. The soldier-president McMahon says (July, 1873,) that 
44 when empires and republics become synonymous with disci- 
pline, every citizen a soldier and every soldier the servant of 
the republic, wrangling and strife will cease in this country. " 

The general desertion of this high field of inquiry by think- 
ing men proceeds somewhat from the idea that the theory of 
the subject has been already exhausted, and that only length- 



INTRODUCTORY. 15 

ened experience can bring improvements in practice: but it 
principally proceeds from the conviction (i) that argument can 
be of but little avail against the forces of ignorance, passion, 
prejudice, habit, casualty, violence and fraud that now have pos- 
session of the domain of politics ; and (2) that individual assault 
upon the works of society, garrisoned by society, must be for- 
ever futile. Nor should these discouraging views be hastily 
blamed : for if philosophy, armed with eloquence and devotion, 
and consecrated by martyrdom, could avail to force the ancient 
strongholds of maladjustment and wrong doing in public 
affairs, humanity, it might well seem, would not still so often 
be clad in weeds, nor social progress find such long delay. 

But the real difficulty of introducing any deep political re- 
form into a modern free community proceeds not so much 
from these opposing influences, nor even from the incompe- 
tence, indifference and inertia of the people, as from the hith- 
erto unsolved problem of how to unite, in any large community, 
the many disconnected elements of native social influence in a 
concerted effort. But for this defect, the art of government 
might be as prosperous as mechanics, chemistry or any other of 
the various sorts of business that now infinitely surpass it in 
the rate of progress. In the latter case individual intelli- 
gence and energy suffice, but, in the other, wide consent and 
combined movement are required. Every pump-maker can 
avail himself of Torricelli's vacuum ; but not of Adam Smith's 
political economy. 

This is the grand reason why neither general effort nor in- 
tention has ever had much to do with shaping political institu- 
tions. Says Cicero : " As children employ their limbs without 
learning how to use them, so political society has taken its 
various forms without much calculation of its own." The 
casualty of intestine broils, conquest, colonization, or the like, 
has made one country a monarchy, another an oligarchy, and 
another a republic. Our own boasted federal system was but 
the birth of an accidental congeries of small communities, each 
autonomic, but each needing the others' support. It is this 
predominance of chance that still makes the civil geography 
of Europe as changeable as the skies. Political society, even 
among the supreme Caucasian race, yet but imitates the blind 



1 6 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

elemental warfare which of old prepared its geologic seat. 
To boil and subside, to be shifted by nether shock and ground 
by upper violence, to be worn by floods, and suffer alternate 
heats and frosts, still mirrors its career. 

Can this sorry state of things be helped by human endeavor ? 
The doctrines that are now in vogue seem to say not. Says 
Mr. Herbert Spencer, speaking of the constructions and behavior 
of political society : " Those forces alone are efficient which 
have grown out of national character." " The growth of a gov- 
ernmental organization follows from the nature of the men who. 
have associated themselves together to satisfy their needs." 
Again : " This belief in the innate virtue of constitutions is as 
baseless as was the belief in' the natural superiority of royal 
personages ;" and again : " Forms of government are of value 
only so far as national character gives life to them, and are 
essential only as agencies through which that national charac- 
ter may work out its effects." His American commentator 
and apostle, Mr. Youmans, in the June, 1873, number of the 
Popular Science Monthly, adds the logical corollary, that 
" character is certain to work out its effects, and whenever 
governmental forms cease to be suitable agencies of national 
character in the working out of the national destiny, the former 
give way, the latter alone persists." 

This is but a dreary echo of Epicurus ; and would both un- 
nerve personal effort and mummify public spirit : for surely it 
is little that the individual, or the generation can hope to do 
toward changing slow-grown national character. Logically 
carried out, this philosophy would lead the taxpayer of New 
York or New Orleans to sit idly by while the " natural develop- 
ment " of politics makes him a pauper. But history discredits, 
and reason repudiates the doctrine. Mr. Spencer in fact mis- 
applies his own instruction. After having rightly made inheri- 
tance, environment and integration the three great elements of 
the social state, he seems, in the above passage, to forget that 
the last is by no means the mere passive product of the others, 
but their equal partner, also, in active force. It can deflect the 
stream of long inheritance ; and, like each separate particle of 
matter in gravity, reacts on equal terms upon all that surround 
it. As the skill and muscle of the mariner enable him to cross 



INTRODUCTORY. I 7 

the current that he floats on, so can individual power wrestle 
not in vain against the very tides of time. Frames of govern- 
ment are just as much matters of development as spinning 
frames are, and no more. Granted that Watt was the product 
of inheritance and the environment, the steam-engine was the 
product of Watt ; and it certainly has had no small influence in 
shaping the destiny of the nation that he belonged to. Man 
is the chief circumstance in the environment of man. For 
each passing generation it is personality — that near-by and 
short-lived tertium quid which telescopic philosophy is apt to 
overlook — that is chief arbiter of political affairs. 

Unless, therefore, the question of the right construction of 
civil government be that fateful riddle which each generation 
in turn must undertake and fail at, suffering condignly for the 
failure, we need not regard the situation as hopeless. As in 
geology a new access of heat gathers new veins of silver or 
gold, so may fresh study avail to bring into profitable assem- 
blage elements of political truth that have heretofore lain 
scattered, and therefore useless. I know not why the skill that 
in these keen-sighted days has found out the chemistry of the 
stars, sucked from the deep strata of the earth her profitable 
juices, and even analyzed the human conscience till the ma- 
chinery of a clock is hardly easier to understand, may not yet 
avail to contrive something better in the construction of civil 
society than has yet been anywhere employed. 

Let us examine this subject as it is presented to the Ameri- 
can people. 
2 



CHAPTER II. 

OUR DEMOCRACY A PARTIAL FAILURE. 



SECTION I. 



N 



PRESENT BEHAVIOR OF OUR POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

OT many will deny that the present state of public affairs 
in this country gives cause for great dissatisfaction 
and anxiety. Only the successful politician, the fanatic parti- 
san or the patriot fool is contented with it. The paeans to 
" Columbia ! child of the skies," that Dwight and Freneau sung, 
and Paine and Jefferson echoed, have turned to apologies in 
the mouths of Centennial orators, or even to reproaches. 
Neither government at Washington, nor at any State-house or 
city hall, is held in much respect. Democracy has begun to 
incur its own contempt. All the anchors by which the faith of 
the founders of our institutions held — whether written constitu- 
tions, frequent elections, or the general distribution of land — 
are loosening from the ground ; while, under the lee, threaten 
the rocky shores where lie strown the wrecks of all earlier re- 
publics. No means of security anywhere appear. Accounting 
has become a trick, responsibility a sham, investigation a farce, 
and punishment a myth. We separated from the mother coun- 
try on account of " taxation without representation," but we 
have found that, the more general the representation, the heavi- 
er is the taxation. Not a few of the intelligent among us, wit- 
nessing the good behavior and good fortunes of all her present 
dependencies, almost regret that we ever forsook her guiding 
hand. 

Our repute abroad is perishing. The glory that still clings 
about the American name is not due to the present behavior of 
our politics, but to its former purity and intelligence, the general 



OUR DEMOCRACY A PARTIAL FAILURE. 1 9 

character of the people, and the triumphs of individual genius. 
We are becoming a warning, instead of an example ; and the 
schools of tyranny and prescription use our story for a text-book 
of admonition. 

Only a brief reference to some of the more conspicuous 
features of this miscarriage of American democracy, with an 
occasional illustration from facts, will be here made : an indict- 
ment that should embrace them all would fill volumes. 

The first thing that the observer will notice is the division 
of the great body of the people into two 

Conflicting Parties, 

which, with seldom much basis in national, have none what- 
ever in local policy ; but which, nevertheless, determine them 
both, wresting from uprightness every public function. Not 
personal fitness, nor any matter of policy chiefly decides which 
candidate shall be President, Congressman, Governor or Alder- 
man, but what party he belongs to. So seated is this artifice, 
or fiction, that it is now not only constantly recognized in va- 
rious ways by legislation, but is even taken account of in 
organic law — as in the latest constitutions of Ohio and Penn- 
sylvania. 

A custom of frequent 

Rotation in Office 

everywhere prevails, whereby the experience and tried qual- 
ities that in all private business are counted of the greatest 
value, are lost to public use. From this come bad manage- 
ment of the commonwealth, and great stimulation of office- 
seeking. 

The selection of all our public servants has virtually passed 
into the hands of 

Organizations of Politicians^ 

who leave nothing for the people. to do but to endorse their 
nominations — and indeed, by false election returns, not seldom 
counterfeit that endorsement. 

Politics having thus become a business, business has in turn 
become a politician. Hence 



20 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

The Lobby, 

which crowds the approaches of every capitol and city hall 
with the attorneys of private interests, cooperative with each 
other, and ready to buy all that are for sale. 

That all our public men are corrupt is the opinion only of 
corruption itself; but that a very large portion of them are, re- 
cent exposures have abundantly demonstrated. It is hardly 
too much to say that 

Venality has become the Higher Law of Public Life. 

This is conceded by general opinion. " Laws " says Hon. 
Sam. J. Bayard, " have become a purchasable commodity ; " 
and so, he might have added, has their execution. When pub- 
lic bodies are incorrupt, it is most often because their virtue 
has had no great temptation. Though rankest where the soil 
is richest, corruption has lately sprouted even in the lean pas- 
tures of Vermont and Nebraska. Fondest of big contracts, 
liberal commissions and fat domains, it does not disdain to feed 
upon the scanty revenues of poor-houses and hospitals. From 
the gift-taking master of the White House to the janitor of 
the Tombs who deals out the courtesies of the gallows for a 
consideration, everywhere shines out the greedy eye, and is 
stretched forth the expectant palm. Take the case of the 
Credit Mobilier: that single transaction would have doubly 
decimated the forty-second Congress, and twice emptied the 
chair of the Vice-Presidency itself, had the matter been tried 
by the scrutiny of skill and with the severity of ancient honor, 
instead of before a dull and easy, if not sympathizing tribunal. 
So, the recent partial exposures of the Indian Rings, the Post- 
office Rings, the Whisky Rings, and scores of others the like, 
are absolute proof of wide prevailing corruption in all depart- 
ments of the federal service. 

It is no better in the several States. Railroad legislation, 
even in the most virtuous of them, has reeked with rottenness. 
Witness the history of Hartford and Erie in Massachusetts, 
and of the Vermont Central in Vermont. Very seldom, notori- 
ously, is any public edifice built without participation by the 
authorities in charge in the unlawful profits of its erection ; or 



OUR DEMOCRACY A PARTIAL FAILURE. 21 

any prison, asylum or reformatory carried on without similar 
malfeasance. The canals pay tolls to the collector of tolls ; 
banking and insurance are blackmailed by their official super- 
intendents, and school-book monopolists divide with school 
boards their exorbitant exactions. 

The case of municipalities is still worse. Here, surely, local 
government for local purposes has broken down. There is no 
civic virtue that is not thwarted in the city. The great ex- 
penditures for streets, roads, parks, water, lighting, the public 
peace, and the public health which these centres of population, 
business and wealth are obliged to make, gather about them a 
flight of harpies beyond the common. The familiar story of 
New York is the story of them all. Jobbery and fraud per- 
vade her business. What of her roll of officers is not made up 
of corruptionists is pretty much filled out with sinecurists. 
Her commerce is vexed by extortionate, and, often, unlawful 
fees. Her chief highways lie foul and dilapidated, while far 
out in the suburbs an army of surveyors, assessors, and favored 
contractors busily confiscate the property that they pretend to 
benefit. Her architecture, harassed by official craft and greed, 
but unbenefited by official skill, awaits its turn of casual confla- 
gration. Her public schools are the prey of stealing tradesmen 
and educational quacks. Her charities support the idle and 
the dissolute. The guardians of her health are themselves 
rotten. Her police lie in wait for the innocent, and shield the 
guilty. She has no punishments that influence will not soften, 
and no prison that a golden key will not unlock. 

Even our judiciary has got a taint. The oppressions of a 
heathen age have returned to vex the weak and the friendless. 
In the lower courts illegal fees are exacted by justices and re- 
corders, fines appropriated, favor shown to politicians and their 
friends, and judgment delayed, or bent in aid of wrong and in 
obstruction of right. In many parts of the South and frontier 
West judges are chosen, it is credibly stated, for the very pur- 
pose of shielding the friends and punishing the enemies of the 
politicians that nominate them. It is notorious that in the 
federal District Courts, as well in New York and Vermont as 
in Arkansas and North Carolina, innumerable prosecutions 
have been instituted for the mere purpose of bringing emoiu- 



22 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

ment to commissioners, marshals and prosecuting attorneys. 
The referee courts and judicial receiverships of the State of 
New York are but a field where lawyers league together to rob 
clients. Not many years ago our county judges conspired to 
procure from the legislature by personal and party pressure 
an increase of pay that was demanded neither by right nor 
public opinion. In a single year, 1872, four members of the 
Supreme Court of the State of New York were impeached and 
condemned, or escaped such ignominy by resignation or death. 
The Federal judiciary was thinned about the same time by 
the forced retirement of three district judges. There are many 
who believe that its highest rank has been twice packed within 
the last ten years ; once in the interest of a party, and once 
in the interest of Wall Street. 

A recent passage in the history of the New York and Erie 
Railroad furnishes a comprehensive example of our political 
debauchery. I refer to the culminating disaster of that great 
property, when a Foreign Minister of the Republic, in the hire 
of foreign capitalists, got the aid of the State legislature and ju- 
diciary, and of the police authority of the city of New York, and 
even the promise of countenance and help, if they should be 
needed, from the President himself, gained by force and intrigue 
the control of the road, and divided the profits of the conspir- 
acy among the conspirators. 

But we suffer even more from 

The Incompetency of Public Men 

than from their dishonesty. The to-and-fro policy of Congress 
about the tariff has cost the country more than a thousand 
Credits Mobiliers would ; and the folly of an alderman is more 
destructive to our welfare even than his greed. 

The business of making laws is by far the most difficult, as 
well as the most important of public functions ; and yet we 
constantly see it committed to men who are grossly ignorant 
alike of all the settled principles of governmental policy, of the 
history and present condition of the law, of the real needs 
of their constituents, and of the state and methods of the pub- 
lic business. No spectacle is more painful for intelligent patri- 
otism to contemplate than the narrowness and crudity of ideas, 



OUR DEMOCRACY A PARTIAL FAILURE. 23 

the confusion of methods, and the futility of measures, that 
characterize average American legislatures. Constantly they 
present the sorry sight of men talking who have nothing 
to say, and voting about what they do not comprehend. 
They start for they know not what, over an unknown road, 
stumbling about in the dark, and wheeling us from slough into 
slough. Their proceedings exhibit neither decorum, method 
nor industry. The greater part of every session they loiter 
away, or occupy in unworthy personal and party squabbles ; 
while, near the end, they hurry along their botched work like 
belated apprentices, and leave it half unfinished at the last. 
Governor Tilden, of New York, found it necessary to veto one 
hundred and thirty-seven bills in one session, on account of 
absurdities, contradictions, superfluity, incompleteness or un- 
constitutionality. His successor, Governor Robinson, has been 
kept even busier in the discharge of the same task. These 
bodies exhibit the natural fecundity of low organisms. Every 
new legislator comes to his work bursting with as many pro- 
jects of law as a pismire eggs. Said Governor Seymour in his 
annual message of 1872 ; " Our legislature now passes more than 
a thousand bills each session, filling two volumes of a thousand 
pages each." How many more are introduced and considered 
he does not state. Says Governor Robinson in a communica- 
tion to the legislature May 18, 1877: " Within twenty years 
above two thousand three hundred laws relating to the city 
of New York, of which nearly six hundred make or modify 
governmental powers, have been precipitated upon the statute 
books. Laws heaped upon laws, original, repealing, amendatory 
and re-enacting, make a mingled heap from which lawyers 
shrink confounded and judges turn at fault. Our highest 
court has held one branch of New York city law utterly beyond 
interpretation or construction." It is the like in other States 
and at Washington. The British Parliament, though it unites 
the powers and functions of Congress and of all our separate 
State legislatures and constitutional conventions, and manages 
a half a hundred Colonies and a fourth part of the population 
of the earth, does not pass as many laws annually as the State 
of New Jersey. This profusion has increased many fold since 
this generation began, and still grows. An Albany correspond- 



24 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

ent of the New York Tribune is boasting to-day (May 8, 1877) 
that the present legislature has already exceeded the whole 
work of the last by thirty enactments and is not yet near 
through its work ! 

It is through the incapacity of our law-makers that our 
legislation, state, national and municipal, is now but a heap of 
confusion, most unlike the work of intelligent art. Study can- 
not master it, nor ingenuity reconcile its inconsistencies. 
Hence the multiplicity, protraction, cost and disappointments 
of litigation. " Forty years ago," said a judge of the Supreme 
Court at a recent meeting of the District bar in Syracuse, " we 
knew what law was, but now we do not." But for what still 
remains of the old Common Law to guide our courts, our sit- 
uation, for any security of rights or certainty of obligations, 
would be pitiful indeed. The contents of our statute books 
are becoming as incapable of codification as the rubbish of the 
streets of being turned to crystal ; and, if they could be brought 
into some order, the next legislature, by the impact of a thou- 
sand new statutes, would fetch confusion back. Thus this very 
year (1877), a part of the Code which the New York legislature 
had appointed a commission to prepare about twenty years 
ago being offered for approval, the law committee of the 
Senate forthwith proposed two hundred and seventy-five 
amendments to it ; and its adoption had to be postponed. 

If we might regard the work of each successive legislature 
as a fresh investment of the public will, the habiliments of 
American democracy would resemble nothing so much as the 
beggarly suits with which, one over another, some prosperous 
tramp endues himself, each displaying as many rents and 
grease spots as it hides. 

Taxation is nigh Unbearable. 

More and more true grows the saying of Necker, that " the 
fisc is the state." Barbarism pays for government with blood, 
civilization with money. It is recorded that the men of Lor- 
raine joined in the Revolution of 1789 because the king and the 
seigniors exacted from them a twentieth part of the products 
of the land. Would that democracy would let us off as easy ! 
In the city where I live productive real estate is taxed near to 



OUR DEMOCRACY A PARTIAL FAILURE. 2$ 

the amount of its rental value, and in many instances beyond 
it. There are few cities in the land where at least a fourth 
part of the income from real estate is not gathered into the 
public treasury. In rural regions the case is somewhat better. 
To these direct taxes is to be added the large indirect levy 
upon our living that the federal government makes in customs 
and excise. 

But even this enormous cost of government does not always 
enable us to pay as we go. There are few of our municipalities 
that do not add to their debts every year, issuing new bonds, 
not only for extraordinary undertakings, but to meet current 
expenses. The indebtedness of the cities in the State of New 
York was tripled between 1866 and 1876. As things are going 
it seems impossible in many of them, for the property owners 
long to escape the utter confiscation of their possessions, un- 
less they resort to repudiation, or mob the sheriff. It has been 
demonstrated by Mr. Harris of Springfield, Massachusetts, that 
the average net saving of each citizen is less than ten dollars 
per annum ; but direct taxes in our cities amount to double 
that. Not long can any people stand this. It is not strange 
that so many communities in the South and West are refusing 
to pay their debts. 

Apart from what is raised to meet public debts — of which 
the great bulk has no honest parentage — not one half of this 
enormous levy would be required under a capable and honest 
conduct of the public business. Experts tell us that Vander- 
bilt's or Stewart's book-keepers and book-keeping would keep 
the records of the federal treasury at less than a quarter of the 
present expense. Were our navy conducted with the skill and 
economy that characterized the management of the Philadel- 
phia Centennial Exhibition, it would make a far more cred- 
itable display than it has lately made, and at vastly less than 
its present cost. There is no city in the land but what if it 
could put its best men in control of its affairs would save 
more than half its present outlays. 

Little, alas ! can the mass of the people understand the ways 
and the particulars in which they are cheated. No gentle heir- 
ess under a corrupt and cunning guardian is more ignorant how 
her estate is despoiled than is democracy in this country of the 



26 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

robberies that it suffers at the hands of its ministers. Some- 
times we get a narrow glimpse of certain wrongs that for a 
moment crop to light — as when we see a navy rot ; a harbor 
built, in the interest of local politicians, that commerce does 
not need ; public buildings erected at three-fold the proper 
cost ; a defaulter caught with his pockets full ; or a canal, or 
whiskey ring, grown over-brazen by long success, exposed ; but 
the pervading misconduct of affairs is, to the common mind, 
but a field of surmise. Public officers seem purposely to mys- 
tify the public business and the public accounts. Thus the 
clerks of the federal exchequer — secretary, treasurer, collector, 
register and auditor — render balance-sheets that no man finds it 
possible to reconcile. Thus no member of a municipality, any- 
where, can find out how his city stands financially : and thus it 
happened — for striking illustration of this statement— that, a 
few years ago, a Committee of the best citizens of New York 
gave Tweed, Sweeney, Conolly, Hall and the rest, in the height 
of their fraudulent career, a certificate of integrity. 



SECTION II. 



OUR POLITICAL CONDITION IS DETERIORATING. 

This conclusion is hard for patriotism to come to. Like a 
man in consumption, who still feels the principle of life stir 
within his breast, we refuse to acknowledge our own decay. 
But the fact, nevertheless, is indisputable. 

Thirty years ago the organizations of politicians that have 
now taken charge of the people's business were but in embryo. 
Office-seeking, such as we see it now, and the constant wanton 
change of public officers, were both utterly unknown in our 
early history. Not till lately has official power been publicly 
used to control elections ; nor the press been systematically 
subsidized out of public treasuries ; nor the lobby moved from 
the attitude of the open petitioner to authority to become the 
secret go-between of private greed and official venality, and 
yet to stand cheek by jowl with senators and judges. 



OUR DEMOCRACY A PARTIAL FAILURE. 2J 

Party has Changed for the Worse. 

The spirit of party, to be sure, was undoubtedly more intense 
in the early part of our history than it is of late, and more often 
embittered personal relations. But that was because there was 
then more conscience and more conviction in politics. So long 
as the young republic was believed by some to be still in peril 
from foreign hostility, and, by others, from foreign friendship ; 
while the strength and fitness of its construction were not yet 
fully proved ; and while the most vital questions of domestic 
policy and administration were still in dispute, party spirit was a 
form of patriotism, and it was natural and reasonable that a dif- 
ference in politics should make enemies of neighbors. But 
there are no such grounds of honest party quarrel now. The 
machinery of politicians has taken the place of popular zeal — 
the discipline of a hired army of the spirit of a patriotic militia 
— in the conduct of our affairs. Surely this is a change for 
the worse. 

The early Annals of the Republic furnish Few Instances of 

Official Crime. 

Defalcation was so unknown, even in the last generation, 
that when Swartwout, a collector of customs at New York, ran 
away with the public funds, he christened the new malfeasence 
with his own name. Said Governor Tilden : " Eight and 
twenty years ago I have stood in the legislative halls of the 
State, and no member elected to an office in the gift of the 
people would have been suspected of dishonesty or peculation." 
But now, as said Isaiah of apostate Jerusalem, " every one 
loveth gifts and followeth after rewards." The multiplying 
investigations of Congress and State legislatures, like the 
lengthening calendar of a criminal court, testify to the growing 
rifeness of malversations in office. So common have they be- 
come that the news of them palls upon the public sense. Only 
when some Democratic hero or Republican saint, like Tweed 
or Colfax, is caught red-handed ; or when a new volume of 
fraud is opened, like the District of Columbia Ring, or the 
Brooklyn Bridge Ring, is our curiosity awakened. Things 
that twenty-five years ago would have greatly excited the pub- 



28 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

lie mind are now put in small type by the appreciative editor, 
and postponed by the reader to the chronicles of base ball. 
Once the suspicion of impurity in a public man made him 
avoided, but now, so weakened or infected is democratic 
sentiment, the most notorious political rogue stays undis- 
turbed in his club and in his church. 

Not till lately has the virtuousness of the judiciary come 
under suspicion. Not till lately has the pulse of popular fa- 
vor been felt Tor from this high station, or the ermine been 
badged with party mottoes. Since 1870 more judges have 
been impeached, or resigned to avoid impeachment, than in 
all our history before. Rottenness now reaches back to the 
very springs of justice. Said Recorder Hackett of New York 
city at the opening of the October term of the court of General 
Sessions (1874): "The Grand Jury has come to be a body 
quite as much under lobby influence as legislative bodies." 
Such accusation was never before made from such high quar- 
ters : but it was justified by abundant facts. 

The Decay of Skill 

among public men even exceeds the decay of integrity. Con- 
stantly the management of the commonwealth falls farther and 
farther behind the requirements of the times. Blundering, 
make-shift and make-believe are about all that is now going 
on. Let him who doubts our decline in this regard compare 
the discussions and the work of the framers of the federal 
system with the records of recent constitutional conventions 
in New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Illinois — communities 
each about equalling the sum of the Colonies in population, 
and far exceeding them in general enlightenment. Down to 
about the beginning of this generation our laws, State and 
Federal, exhibited as much foresight, elevation of purpose, 
and fitness of methods, as have ever been shown in the highest 
parliaments of the world. Better things were seldom done by 
government than were done by the State of New York at the 
period when it built its canals, secured to every child the 
opportunity of education, set capital free in its banking 
system, and labor and enterprise in its abolishment of impris- 
onment for debt. In those days each annual statute-book 



OUR DEMOCRACY A PARTIAL FAILURE. 29 

marked a step onward, and we were fast proving the inventors 
of politics for the world. Then our public councils, municipal, 
state and federal, were filled with men who had arrived at a 
just leadership in the community by force of character, intelli- 
gence and training ; but now they are filled mainly by intriguers 
and demagogues, by the sutlers and drum majors of party war- 
fare, with little character, less intelligence and no training at 
all. The sort of men that Massachusetts and Virginia once 
sent to Congress they seldom send there now. I hazard noth- 
ing in asserting that the Federal Senate to-day, in point of 
ability or elevation of character, is not the equal of the average 
Senate of the State of New York anterior to the adoption of 
the constitution of 1846. Still faster and lower, by universal 
admission, has fallen the character of our city councils. 

To spread out a list of personal illustrations in this regard 
would bring little strength to this position ; and, however fairly 
done, might subject me to the imputation of prejudice or mal- 
ice. But there are three personages in our history who have 
alike achieved the highest civil station by virtue of military 
success ; whose character is of common knowledge, and forms 
a part of the property of the country. Chronology and my 
future argument invite the comparison of them ; for they stand 
equi-distant in time ; and to my mind, are just exponents of 
the three influences that have controlled our politics in its three 
chief epochs : — the first, while a few men, high in public re- 
spect, virtually appointed our rulers ; the second, when the sen- 
timents of the people at large found free voice; and the third, 
since a set of scheming and corrupt politicians have usurped 
all the functions of true democracy. 

Justly to characterize Washington would exhaust the lan- 
guage of encomium. To say that he was virtuous, patriotic, 
just, high-minded, and greatly wise, is but to echo the voice 
of universal fame. Whatever slight detraction his glory suf- 
fered from the jealousy or misappreciation of his cotemporaries 
and companions has never found response in removed opinion. 
The fragrance of his memory, like royal musk which long per- 
fumes some palace chamber, still sweetens and refreshes the 
national life, forbidding despair. 

Andrew Jackson, the second of the trio, though separated 



30 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

by some interval from that exalted nature, was yet of lofty 
mold. He was one of nature's true chiefs. His valor shone 
not less brightly in the council than in the field. His mighty 
stroke it was that cut us loose from all the heritages of the 
past, and sent American Democracy forth to seek its fortune. 
He was indeed both a friend and an admirer of the people. His 
integrity was never questioned ; and though his character and 
career, in some minor particulars, may not have been without 
blemish, yet, despite of partisan animosity, no citizen of the 
country he so vigorously ruled has ever been ashamed of him. 
But who shall say that none of us have been ashamed of 
President Grant? 

Taxes increase much faster than population and wealth. 

About the beginning of this century Washington wrote to 
Gouverneur Morris that " taxes are hardly known but in name." 
We cannot say that now. Thirty years ago the Federal gov- 
ernment raised for its ordinary expenses about one dollar per 
head of the population annually ; for the last five years it has 
raised above four dollars per head. In 1852 the rate of State 
taxation in New York was one-fourth of a mill on the dollar ; 
twenty-five years later it is about four mills. The rate of tax- 
ation in the cities of Massachusetts, excluding Boston, has 
mounted up from $5.94 per head of population in 1861 to $17. 
11 in 1875, and their debts from $1 1,000,000 to $70,500,000. 
In Philadelphia, between 1858 and 1873 the rate of municipal 
taxation went from one and a half to six per cent on the 
assessed value of property ; and in Rochester, N. Y., from 
one dollar and twenty cents a head in 1840 to thirteen dollars 
and forty-three cents in 1876. Tweed limited the levy on the 
property of his tributaries to two per cent, but since his time 
" reformers " have got it up to two and three-quarters. These 
are no more than average instances, casually taken, of the 
growing fiscal burdens of the people. It is a mistake to say, as 
some do, that the cost of government has increased only in 
proportion with the cost of other things. In fifty years the 
expenses of the municipality of New York have grown from 
two dollars and thirty-three cents a head to thirty-two dollars 
and twenty-one cents, but in that time the average wages of 



OUR DEMOCRACY A PARTIAL FAILURE. 3 1 

labor and the price of its products, which are a measure of the 
average cost of living, have little more than doubled. The 
like is true with regard to the growth in value of the real es- 
tate of that city, as compared with the increase of its taxation. 
Not till in our time has 

The Money-making Spirit 

coupled with politics, engendering vices unknown before. I 
by no means join in the common charge that capital is a chief 
corrupter of public virtue. Capital is the least aggressive of 
all the elements of social power. It has small taste for poli- 
tics, especially in a democracy. Apt to be envied or suspected 
by the commonalty, and dependent for its security on the 
general harmony and quiet, it is slow to offend or raise a 
question. Its instinct is to ask of government only to be let 
alone. Accordingly it seldom busies itself at the caucus, the 
convention, the polls or the capitol, except for its own protec- 
tion. When demagogues, strikers and fanatics conspire against 
it in these arenas, it cannot be blamed for meeting them there 
with their own weapons. What I chiefly have reference to is 
such matters as the known confidences between Wall street 
speculators and the high officers of the Treasury at Washing- 
ton ; and, especially, a kind of bastard business enterprise, false- 
ly assuming the mien of capital and the garb of public spirit, 
which, through its creatures, hirelings and dupes, has for many 
years had great control in all our legislatures and common 
councils ; and, by the procurement of subsidies, contracts and 
other favorable legislation, has robbed the people of uncounted 
millions. Somewhat set back at Washington by the collapse 
of the Northern Pacific Railroad — grand type of the modern 
combination of politics with money making — and the various 
calamities and developments that succeeded it, this form of mal- 
administration and public vice, under the programme of paternal 
policy that the present federal administration has published, 
threatens to exceed the worst of its past performances. The 
same powers that have sequestered so large a part of the 
public lands by procuring railroad subsidies, are already mo- 
nopolizing the melted snows of the Sierra Nevada and the 
Rocky Mountains ; and the day seems to be not far off when 



32 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

every acre on the slopes below will be forced to pay tribute to 
them for needed irrigation. As things are going it is no way 
incredible that a syndicate of speculators in sugar or real estate, 
flattering the ambition or avarice of a low-natured president, 
mature product of our politics, should yet plunge us into a 
disgraceful foreign war. Have we not already had warning of 
such a danger in the case of San Domingo? What but our 
wasted navy has hindered a greedy administration from seizing 
upon unfortunate Cuba? 

What special calamities await us in this downward career 
it would be presumptuous to predict. The perils of nations 
have seldom been foreseen. History has been a series of sur- 
prises, each shattering some confidence of theory in race, 
religion, circumstances, or institutions. Democracy, like a 
hysterical woman, always has a second convulsion easier than 
the first. It has suffered one in this country already, and it had 
a narrow escape from another at the last Presidential election. 

I had thought to illustrate and make good the allegations 
that have been made in this chapter against our political con- 
dition by a full chronicle of public misconduct in the State of 
New York for some short recent period, and had even advanced 
some way in its preparation ; but I soon discovered that to 
complete the task would occupy years ; and, after all, would 
in effect add little to what the reader may gather from the 
public prints. 

SECTION III. 

ARE OUR POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS WORKING AS WELL AS 

THE BEST? 

If this inquiry must be answered in the affirmative we ought 
perhaps to be satisfied ; but if that be at least doubtful, we are 
bound to try to better our situation. 

In estimating the comparative successfulness of our system 
of government, we must be careful to set one side that part of 
our welfare which has been due to other than political causes. 
This nation was born with a gold spoon in its mouth. Its 
lineage was of the best, and it began its career in that aus- 
picious hour when the growing diffusion of knowledge first gave 



OUR DEMOCRACY A PARTIAL FAILURE. 33 

democracy a reasonable hope of success. The Colonists were 
fortunate alike in what they escaped from and in what they 
brought with them. Leaving behind whatever in the political 
arrangements of the old world was accidental, arbitrary or 
effete, they fetched and planted here in full maturity the doc- 
trines of liberty and right, and the essential methods of order, 
that it had cost their ancestors centuries of trial to discover 
and establish. The vast and vacant material resources of the 
country, lying within easy reach of the overflowing and adven- 
turous populations across the Atlantic, secured us numbers 
and wealth. Political equality and liberty, general education, 
local government for local purposes, freedom of religion, and 
freedom of the press, were prepared for us in the Colonies, and 
were the nation's birthright. Finally, we have had no pow- 
erful and aggressive neighbors to disturb or threaten the full 
use of these advantages. 

If under such unexampled conjunction of favorable circum- 
stances our political state is not the best in the world, surely 
we have good reason to be dissatisfied with it. Whether it is 
that, is very doubtful, to say the least. In my judgment there 
is not a nation in Europe of congener stock that need fear the 
comparison. In all of them life, liberty and the pursuit of 
happiness are as secure, order as well maintained, justice as 
evenly administered, and religion and the press substantially as 
free as they are here. To be sure they lack the absolute politi- 
cal equality that we now enjoy; but let us remember that we 
have not enjoyed it long, and that it is not yet by any means 
certain that it is good for us. 

As to the comparative ability with which the public busi- 
ness is conducted, the intelligent American will certainly hesi- 
tate before he boasts over Great Britain, Belgium or Germany. 
We lately prided ourselves on a great military success ; when 
straightway appeared an exploit of the German government 
in the same line, compared with which ours seemed but the 
triumph of brute numbers. Poor show, surely, as a display of 
military daring or skill, makes the " March to the Sea " through 
a region held by women alone, or the long labor of the Army 
of the Potomac, by the side of the swift campaign that began 
on the Rhine and ended in Paris, sweeping from its path the 
3 



34 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

armies of a nation unsurpassed in military renown. So, how 
much better did the government of France, even in its disas- 
tered state, meet the financial question that arose, than did our 
own in its triumphant ! Ten months after the conclusion of 
her war the creditors of France could get gold or its equivalent 
in payment of their claims, while ten years after the conclusion 
of ours the Secretary of the Treasury began specie payment 
by dispensing five dollars on each warrant in a debased silver 
coinage ! 

Negro slavery, which long stood an obstacle to the march 
of the modern spirit of humanity, has now nearly disappeared 
from the civilized world ; but by different means in different 
countries. In the French possessions it was one of the first 
sacrifices on the newly erected altar of liberty, fraternity and 
equality. Great Britain bought it up in her colonies with 
twenty million pounds of philanthropic money. The Czar 
crossed it out with a pen. In Brazil it is near extinguishment 
by measured provision of law. In this country alone it waited 
to be drowned in a sea of blood. 

If we come down to the more ordinary duties of govern- 
ment it will be quite as easy to point out where we fall behind, 
as where we surpass the best managed countries of the old 
world. 

While the cost of government here is increasing for the last 
half century at the rate of nigh one hundred per cent every 
ten years, the taxes of the Englishman are constantly dimin- 
ishing. Only our countrymen of all the world dodge from city 
to country, and from State to State, and even expatriate them- 
selves, to escape the inquisitions and exactions of the tax- 
gatherer. While other countries are abolishing sinecures we 
are multiplying them. The only economy that we practice is 
the economy of neglect. According to late official reports it 
costs to manage the finances of Great Britain one-eighth of one 
per cent of the money handled, while the same work costs us 
five-eighths. One per cent of her revenue is spent in the col- 
lection, and three per cent of ours. Aristocracies are costly 
luxuries, but nothing to what Rings of Politicians are. Not 
many European monarchs can boast a civil list to equal that 
of Tweed. 



OUR DEMOCRACY A PARTIAL FAILURE. 35 

Our administration of municipalities, which is now one of 
the most important parts of governmental business, is con- 
ceded to be about the most burdensome and unjust in taxa- 
tion, the most wasteful in expenditure, the most neglectful of 
the public Welfare, and the most stupid that is known any- 
where. It costs Boston and Pittsburgh nearly three times as 
much, poll for poll, to get themselves governed, as it does 
Edinburgh and Birmingham ; and the indebtedness of New 
York exceeds the debts of all the cities of England put to- 
gether. Says Hon. Joseph Medill, of Chicago, a careful and in- 
telligent critic : " The Hausseman improvements in Paris 
(1869-71) have been carried on with great economy and pru- 
dence, and a scrupulous regard to private rights and public 
convenience." In what city here can this be said of similar 
undertakings? 

I know not in what European state such semi-public inter- 
ests as insurance, banks of saving, bankruptcy and railroads 
get so poor legislative direction and watch as they do here. 
Does any intelligent observer believe that the American Con- 
gress could handle the business of the British Parliament, which 
in variety and complexity many fold exceeds its own, with the 
almost constant success that has been shown there the past 
fifty years? Even Canada could teach us something in the 
management of the Indian tribes. 

As to education, which is one of our especial boasts, it is 
not as general in this country as it is in Sweden, Holland, 
Belgium, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, and it is doubt- 
ful whether it is as good. The Centennial Exhibition must 
have satisfied every intelligent observer that, with regard to 
the methods and apparatus of instruction, we have at least as 
much to learn from foreign nations as they have from us. 
Moreover, the Italian " law Frescati," and the system recently 
inaugurated by the Portuguese government, are undoubtedly 
superior to anything that has been done before or elsewhere on 
this subject. 

Not unduly to multiply these comparisons, two features in 
the conduct of the public business by the Parliament of Great 
Britain, and more or less of all the best governed political com- 
munities on the Continent, favorably distinguish it from the 



36 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

conduct of our own, as well in the State legislatures as in Con- 
gress. I mean (i) the initiation of all important measures by 
a few selected men, constituting a Cabinet ; and (2) the frequent 
commitment for examination and report, and most often in 
effect for decision, of matters of complexity and detail to com- 
missions of experts. In our legislative bodies everything is 
everybody's business. Thus Congress will have fifty plans 
before it for the resumption of specie payments ; and a country 
merchant, become a legislator, will call for the previous ques- 
tion on a bill concerning the police administration of the city 
of New York. 

In one thing, it must be admitted, we have outrun all for- 
eign competitors ; I mean the ambitiousness of many of our 
public works ; but whether such undertakings as the Brooklyn 
Bridge, the Hoosac Tunnel and the New York Capitol will not 
prove monuments of democratic folly, rather than wisdom, re- 
mains to be seen. 

We are apt to think ourselves a peculiarly progressive peo- 
ple ; and so we are individually ; but as to political business it 
is not so certain. Other nations have made great progress in 
our time. Within the last ten years Russia has freed her serfs, 
established trial by jury, a certain freedom of the press, local 
government for local purposes, and a uniform system of munici- 
pal construction. Far greater, it seems to me, has been the 
improvement in the policy and laws of Great Britain since this 
century began than in ours. In one important particular at 
least we are certainly staying behind all the rest of the world ; 
unless the rest is going backward. I mean in the obstruction 
of commerce, and the diversion of industry from its natural 
channels, by our navigation laws, and so-called protective tariff 
of duties. To this it is to all appearance due that the shipping 
of the high seas has fled our flag, and that normal and sym- 
metric development in the occupations of the people has given 
place to distortions and monstrosities, with their attendant 
weaknesses and disasters. 

The friends of democracy looked to this republic to set an 
example of purity to the governments of privilege; but, as it 
turns out, we threaten to outstrip them all in rottenness. No 
respectable government of the old world has lately furnished 



OUR DEMOCRACY A PARTIAL FAILURE. 37 

such multitudinous examples of venality as our recent annals ex- 
hibit. You must go back in French or English history a full cen- 
tury to find scattered instances of the malfeasance in office that 
is now of constant occurrence here. The State of New York 
alone has had more judges in the criminal dock since 1870 than 
Great Britain in the last two centuries. It is long since a mem- 
ber of the House of Commons or of the imperial cabinet in 
Great Britain has been degraded or even censured for corrup- 
tion in office, though at Washington deep-staining dishonor has 
become of frequent occurrence. As to the comparative purity 
of municipal authorities, compared with the sort of men that 
rule in Philadelphia and San Francisco, unless all testimony 
is to be belied, they are saints in the respectable communities 
of the old world. 

This misbehavior of our system has weakened the hopes of 
democracy abroad, while Caesarism takes courage. Says Mr. 
Edward Jusseu, a very intelligent observer and ardent friend 
of popular rights, after re-visiting his fatherland : " A few com- 
munists are now all the republicans there. Those who were 
revolutionists in 1848 are now in favor of a strong government, 
and intensely loyal subjects of the emperor ; and the nation is 
apparently farther from the goal of republicanism than it was 
then. They look upon all republics, our own included, as mis- 
erable failures." Travellers say that there are more monarch- 
ists in this country than democrats in Great Britain. Outside 
of France, republicanism is now the horror of intelligence and 
property all over Europe ; and whether it be not in France itself 
is doubtful. 



CHAPTER III. 

CAUSES AND REMEDIES THAT HAVE BEEN SUGGESTED. 

THIS sorry state of things has been attributed to a thou- 
sand different causes, partial or entire, and as many 
various remedies for it have been proposed. A few of the 
principal of them will be here touched upon, to clear the field 
for a deeper inquiry as to cause and a more radical proposition 
of cure. 

It is to be noticed, preliminarily, that this disappointing 
condition of our politics cannot be attributed to any change of 
circumstances, such as has often altered the destiny of nations. 
We have suffered neither foreign interference nor domestic 
revolution. The only change in the situation worth mention- 
ing is the enfranchisement of the negro ; and the operation of 
that has been entirely confined to the Southern States. Not 
to this, certainly, can be charged what is happening in the 
City or State of New York. Besides, our political decline dates 
from a period long anterior to the Civil War. Indeed, it was 
expected by the school of philanthropic reformers who have 
lately had the lead in social philosophy, at home and abroad, 
that that event would purify our politics. But, surely, they 
have grown no better since it happened. 

Some lay the Fault to Human Nature, 

and contend that nothing better for the future can be expected 
in politics than the circuit and disorder of the past. Not the 
cynical alone indulge in this despairing view, but so cheery a 
man as Franklin taught it toward the end of his life. Said 
Washington, disappointed in the behavior of his compatriots: 
" We have thought too well of human nature." Even the 
faith of Jefferson, than whom the native virtue of mankind had 
seldom more determined champion, waned toward the last, and 



CAUSES AND REMEDIES SUGGESTED. 39 

he came to look for the success of democracy to the impos- 
sible contingency of " keeping people on farms and out of com- 
merce, manufactures and cities." 

To my mind, nevertheless, and without philosophizing on 
the essential nature of man, history furnishes no warrant for 
this discouragement. Very good government has sometimes 
been had in the world, for brief periods, and in narrow spaces ; 
and what has heretofore been the exception may yet become 
the rule. What is to hinder that political advancement should 
come to correspond with moral and material ? Why may not 
the government of England gain as much on its present state 
as it has already gained on the Saxon Heptarchy? The real 
trouble is, not that human nature is unfitted to politics, but 
that politics have never been fitted to human nature. If any 
man claims that human nature is essentially vicious, let him 
explain why in every civilized country the body of laws is in 
restraint of crime and in support of the general good. 

A Good Many Blame the Democratic Principle 

for our failure : but illogically ; for, as I shall clearly show in 
the sequel, under the present system of elections we are not, 
in any of the larger spheres of government, a real democracy, 
but an oligarchy of politicians merely. 

History at large hardly either condemns or justifies the 
democratic principle ; but this instructive fact is clear, that for 
the last hundred years there has been, on the whole, a growing 
tendency toward it among civilized nations. Besides, democ- 
racy alone has a solid basis in the reason of things. The right 
of the people to rule is the everlasting right of the strongest. 
Muscle, Napoleon's " most numerous battalions," is the bottom 
support of government, and the final arbiter of political con- 
test. The pen is mightier than the sword only when it gives 
the sword. Peace itself has no secure foundation except the 
will of the majority of arms-bearing men ; and it is the peculiar 
virtue of popular government to be able to determine on which 
side of a great public question the majority stands. Moreover, 
with the more general diffusion of knowledge, the proportional 
force of mere numbers constantly increases. Thus in barbar- 
ous nations, public opinion, lacking means of expression, has 



40 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

little weight in public affairs ; but in enlightened countries, even 
despotic, it has a good deal. 

However all this may be, the question of forms of govern- 
ment is not a practical one for the American people at the 
present time. If there be something better than democracy in 
store for us, we shall reach it only at a far distant day, by ways 
transcending human anticipation and device, and after horrible 
convulsions. There is no peaceful change in this regard for 
us. Kings sometimes abjectly flee the throne, but the people 
never. Those may amicably cast lots for a passive patrimony, 
but the heritage of democracy is a struggling thing that only 
the sword, dividing joint and marrow, has ever made a new 
disposal of. Our hope is not in substituting something else 
for the rule of the people, but in enabling the people to rule. 

Some say that the reason why our system of democracy is 
not working well is because 

The Nation has grown too large for it. 

But certainly this does not explain the corruptness of munici- 
pal councils, or the incompetence of State legislatures. No 
possible connection of cause and effect can be traced between 
the two things. No political community is too big for the 
handling of genius, any more than the solar system was too 
big for Kepler or Newton to comprehend. 

There are who ascribe the debasement of our politics to 

A Decay of the National Character. 

They say that when the people were good we had a good 
government, and that we have a bad one now because we our- 
selves are in a state of moral decline. They say that we are 
debauched by prosperity, that we admire only success, and that 
luxurious sloth and the worship of Mammon have taken the 
place of patriotic impulse. This doctrine proceeds from mental 
blearness, cheap cynicism or impudent phariseeism ; or is the 
sly self-defence of corruption itself. It has no warrant what- 
ever in the current phenomena of private life, or in any dem- 
onstrations of general public sentiment. Never was greater 
patriotism shown than in our late civil war, both North and 
South. Never have truth and justice been more loved and 



CAUSES AND REMEDIES SUGGESTED. 4 1 

sought after among the people, self respect more cultivated, or 
the social and domestic virtues more practiced than they are 
now. The sordid and discouraged state of our cities is by no 
means due to lack of public spirit, democratic ambition or 
social pride. There is enough of these among the denizens of 
the City of New York, to make its wharves, its streets, its 
parks, its public edifices, its education, its charities and its 
corrections, and whatever else belongs to municipal function, 
marvels of security, convenience and delight. That a corrupt- 
ing influence has lately been shed abroad from the public 
service, like infectious air from some central seated lazaretto, 
is indeed too true ; but it has by no means yet availed to poi- 
son the moral health of the American people. Every element 
that political society needs for success abounds in this country, 
and, despite oppressive and obstructing circumstances, sprouts 
and blossoms thickly every day — though failing most often of 
fruit. 

Many console themselves with the idea that the present 
disastrous state of our politics is but the 

Afterwash of the late Civil War ; 

but they ought by this time to be tired of waiting for such 
disturbance to subside. The fact is that our political decay 
began long before that epoch, and was rather delayed than 
accelerated by it. No doubt the circumstances of that great 
convulsion furnished peculiar opportunities, and unexampled 
inducement, to fraud and peculation ; but they who availed 
themselves of the one, or yielded to the other, were, with few 
exceptions, men who had been apprenticed already to the trade 
of politics. When a million soldiers brought back from the 
camp no demoralization to domestic, social or industrial life, 
as, by universal admission, did ours, it is absurd to attribute 
to the war the general debauchment of politics that we have 
lately been witnesses of. 

Our difficulties can be justly laid 

Neither to the Republican nor to the Democratic Party. 

All but the purblind and fanatical are ready to confess that 
there is little to choose between them, or at least between the 



42 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

organizations of politicians that control them. In folly, waste, 
neglect and corruption, republican rule in our cities has rivalled 
democratic ; nor has a change of party supremacy ever brought 
much advantage to any State. 

Constitutions. 

If the distemper of our politics be traceable to no such 
causes as these, it must be sought for in some defect in our 
method of Constituting Democratic government. 

Constitutions — " paper " constitutions as they are called in 
derision — appear to be in growing disrepute with writers on the 
philosophy of political society. Says Carlyle : " No constitu- 
tion, without some celestial sanction, is worth the paper that 
it is written on." Herbert Spencer makes light of them as 
" artifices," and Buckle treats them in the same vein. " Con- 
stitutional liberty," says Bismarck, " is a delusion." 

But every community that is not governed by the momen- 
tary will of a despot must have an organic law ; that is, a 
definite ci7td established method of constituting and distributing 
political power. This is the essence of a constitution. Whether 
it be written or unwritten makes no odds. The ancient cus- 
tom of the realm is as much a constitution as the parchment 
enactments of any modern convention; and, whatever its ad- 
mirers may boast, is as full of imperfections, and as subject to 
violent and wanton changes. 

Current Constitutional A mendments. 

That our present political system somewhere hides a great 
defect is coming to be generally felt. Said Wendell Phillips 
lately : " The machinery of our government sadly needs over- 
hauling." Said Gov. Seymour, of New York : " In my opinion 
the present Constitution of the State is very deficient, as a 
framework of efficient government." From a like conviction 
New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and I know not how 
many other States, were all holding Constitutional Conventions 
in' the same year (1873). In the forty-second Congress twenty- 
five amendments to the Federal Constitution were proposed. 
There is hardly a city but what goes to the legislature at every 
session, to get its charter .altered. But everything that has 



CAUSES AND REMEDIES SUGGESTED. 43 

yet been done in this direction has proved puerile, or worse. 
Neither Washington nor any State capital has been purified or 
enlightened, nor has any city found substantial relief from its 
grievances. Illinois and Pennsylvania are said to be already 
sick of the principal devices of their last Constitutional Con- 
ventions; and the best intelligence of New York would to-day 
be glad to go back to the Constitution of 1846, or even to that 
of 1823. To my mind none of the many various suggestions 
from distinguished men that have been published promise any- 
thing better. Nevertheless, it may be worth while to comment 
briefly on some of the chief projects of constitutional reform 
that lately occupy or invite the public attention. 
Those which relate to the 

Right of Suffrage 

are the most radical of them, as touching the very foundation 
of democratic government. After a steady extension of this 
privilege for more lhan half a century, culminating not long 
since in the admission to it of a million of ignorant and un- 
practiced negroes, a reaction is threatened. As good a Demo- 
crat as Charles O'Conor thinks he sees in the right of all male 
adults to vote the chief cause of our political difficulties. 
Congress in its latest legislation for the District of Columbia 
has rejected " manhood " suffrage ; and in many other quarters 
the subject is matter of earnest consideration. 

Three chief conditions of the right to vote have been pro- 
posed, viz : (1) Nativity, (2) Education, and (3) the Payment 
of Taxes. 

The first, though the suggestion chiefly of party and reli- 
gious zeal, had also political prudence on its side ; and if it had 
been put in force at the period when it was agitated, now some 
twenty years ago, would no doubt have somewhat hindered the 
decay of our politics: but since the recent decline of immigra- 
tion, which is no way likely ever to resume its former propor- 
tions relatively to the whole population of the country, the 
value of this remedy is pretty much lost. Besides, having 
been once rejected at the polls, the limitation of the suffrage 
to the native born is not likely to appear again as a political 
issue. 



44 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

As to Education, it certainly is not because one in twenty 
of the voters of Philadelphia, or Pennsylvania at large, have 
not learned to read the Constitution that the other nineteen 
make such poor use of the power that it confers on them. 
This test of the fitness of a man to vote has been already tried 
in several of the States, but has nowhere done any good. 
Our difficulties have a source far different from lack of book- 
knowledge. 

The third of these conditions is now exciting fresh interest, 
especially in the State of New York, where a constitutional 
amendment applying it to municipal elections is under con- 
sideration by the legislature and the people. No doubt it is 
as logical that there should be no representation without tax- 
ation as that there should be " no taxation without represen- 
tation ; " but it is uncertain whether this limitation of suffrage 
can be so applied as not to exclude from the polls as many of 
the worthy as of the unworthy. It certainly will shut out the 
great body of intelligent and well brought up young men, 
very few of whom are the possessors of any property to pay 
taxes on before the age of thirty, but who are better qualified 
to vote than the average of owners of real estate. So, in most 
cities, a larger share of professional, literary and scientific men, 
teachers and the like, than of almost any other class of citi- 
zens would be shut out from the ballot-box by this provision. 
There is reason to fear, also, that the bulk of taxpayers would 
be so anxious to keep their taxes down, so ignorant of their 
remoter interests, and so indifferent to the social obligations 
that the possession of property carries with it, that the vices of 
the spendthrift in the administration of our cities would only 
be exchanged for the vices of the miser. But whatever would 
be the advantages or disadvantages of such a limitation, there 
appears to be little likelihood of its being tried at any near 
day, so that its farther discussion may be spared. 

On the whole, though our state would no doubt be greatly 
benefited by the exclusion from the polls of the vicious, the 
unintelligent, the uninterested and the unpatriotic, it is difficult 
to see where and how the law shall draw the line that separates 
these classes from the rest. 

Indeed, at the present time it looks as though the right 



CAUSES AND REMEDIES SUGGESTED. 45 

of suffrage is more likely to be enlarged than narrowed. It is 
threatened 

To call upon the Women to vote ; 

and whether, in the desperation of our politics, and as a still 
untried device, this will not actually be done, is quite problem- 
atical ; though all the instructions of nature, including the very 
instincts of woman herself, oppose. Certain it is that this 
outlaw of decent opinion five and twenty years ago is now 
held in respect by legislatures and constitutional conventions 
in Massachusetts, New York, Colorado and Michigan, and 
respectfully treated in party platforms. Escaped from the 
menagerie of the lecture platform, the wild, foul thing threatens 
to force itself upon us as a family companion. The sexual 
difference and subordination that began with the monad, and 
with the progress of development have grown constantly still 
more distinct, is now proposed to be disregarded in the domain 
of politics ! 

To this astonishing proposition it must suffice to reply, that 
letting women vote will not help the case unless they are 
better or wiser than men. Mere increase of numbers will not 
improve the jury of democracy. Whether they are better is 
remitted to private judgment, as a question too delicate for 
this discussion. Whether or not they are wiser, two or three 
notorious facts should sufficiently indicate. (1) Invention is 
the highest exploit of the understanding. The kitchen, the 
nursery and the parlor, which are woman's customary and 
peculiar realm, contain a thousand pleasing or profitable con- 
trivances, in stove, sewing machine, diaper pin, and window 
shade, for ornament, convenience or comfort. What one of 
them was the device of a woman ? (2) Nobody has hindered 
the fair sex from the occupation of literature ; but who among 
them, from Sappho to George Eliot, has got higher in it than 
the expression of instinct and emotion, or the reflex of a lively 
receptivity? (3) Science is open to them too, but what have 
they added to science ? (4) Music is their favorite and habitual 
pursuit, but what woman has ever written an opera, or even a 
galop ? 

But, admitted to a nominal share in the regulation of politi- 



46 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

cal society, how would the tender sex make it actual ? The 
prime function of government, though one very apt to be over- 
looked in orderly times, is — not to rule well — but to rule. Only 
physical superiority enables it to do this in the long run. At 
bottom, it is brute force that not only restrains the violent and 
punishes the guilty, but holds the orderly citizen to the dis- 
charge of his duties. It is not conscience that makes me pay 
the tax on my house, but the fear of the posse comitatus that 
stands behind the assessor, and will surely turn me into the 
street unless I pay it. Now, when women come to vote, we 
shall not fail to have some enactment, such as about the observ- 
ances of religion, the use of tobacco, the education of children, 
or the control of the family property, to which the majority of 
the stronger sex will be strenuously opposed, and will refuse 
peaceful submission. What-will this new authority do then? 

Minority Representation, Cumulative Voting, etc. 

For some years past public attention has been a good deal 
directed to " minority representation," " cumulative voting," 
" multiple voting," and kindred devices, as means of correcting 
the present misbehavior of democratic politics. 

The chief of them, Minority Representation, is principally 
aimed to check a supposed oppression of the minority by the 
majority. But there is in fact no such oppression. Parties do 
not pass laws against each other in this country. Neither 
men nor opinions are ostracised. Save in the enjoyments of 
the profits of office, the " outs " are just as well off as the " ins." 

Neither could this contrivance hinder whatever oppression 
there might be. When two ride together one must ride behind. 
It is as impossible, when the people rule, as it would be un- 
desirable, for the minority to cope with majority. If anything, 
the minority has too much power already ; as when by help of 
parliamentary rules, it blocks the wheels of major purpose, or 
when, by previous Gerrymandering, it holds possession of the 
legislature, as happens this very year (1876) in the State of 
New York. 

If we are to give minor opinions a share of representation 
where shall we stop? There are more minorities than one. 
The communist party, the paper money party, the woman 



CAUSES AND REMEDIES SUGGESTED. 47 

suffrage party, the temperance party, and a score of others have 
each an equal right to demand a share of power. 

The fact is that, so long as parties exist, the more decided 
is party domination the better. A teetering and fearful gov- 
ernment is. of all, the most unprofitable. Strong party rule 
favors steadiness of policy and vigor of administration. It 
fixes responsibility, clarifies and disembarrasses counsels, and 
gives full trial to whatever measures are tried. It tends to 
diminish the spirit of party itself, and is an approach toward 
concord. Wherever it has prevailed in this country, as in 
Vermont and Massachusetts, and in Virginia and South Car- 
olina before the war, politics have been purer, and public affairs 
better managed, than in New York, Pennsylvania and New 
Jersey, where party supremacy has generally been in doubt. 

Cumulative voting, multiple voting, limited voting and 
other the like ingenious contrivances, too complex to de- 
scribe and almost too many to enumerate here, which this 
alarmed age has devised to correct the present impotence or 
betrayal of popular rule, are even less promising. They are 
unintelligible to the average voter. They are applicable only 
to the few cases where more functionaries than one of identi- 
cal jurisdiction are to be voted for on a single ticket. They 
would tend to bestow power on special interests and transient 
or narrow ideas by favoring the election of extremists, while 
what is wanted is the representation of the mean public will. 
Intended in part to curtail the injurious power of rings, they 
would, in fact, promote it, make log-rolling a necessity, and 
give new advantages to sinister combination over conscientious 
and isolated opinion. The self-seeking, the fanatical and the 
narrow-minded would easily gather about their representative 
candidate, while generous sentiment and liberal idea would 
wander and waste. 

But it is not necessary to speculate about the merit of 
these ingenuities. Experiment has already condemned them. 
They have been tried under a variety of circumstances, and 
have never worked well. Minority representation under the 
new constitution of Illinois has, by general confession, made 
matters worse rather than better. Cumulative or limited 
voting is a feature of the latest constitution of Pennsylvania, 



48 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

but is already reported against for misbehavior by a non- 
partisan committee of the legislature. In Great Britain at the 
election of school authorities in 1873 it resulted in a rivalry of 
religious sects ; in many towns and parishes brought the 
public business to a dead lock; or even, as in Birmingham and 
Manchester, served to put the minority in power. 

Special Legislation Forbidden, 

With a view to stop the prevailing corruption of legisla- 
tures, special legislation is forbidden, or restricted, in all our 
latest State constitutions. Says Hon. Joseph Medill, speaking 
of the recent constitutional convention of Illinois, of which he 
was a leading member : " We have aimed to hinder and hamper 
legislation in the interest of monopoly and special privilege." 
With like view the last constitution of Pennsylvania has emas- 
culated corporations lest her legislature should be whored. 
The purpose is profoundly suggestive, as an outright impeach- 
ment of democracy as now constituted. 

But the device has proved impotent. The politicians 
of Ohio long ago learned how to evade it by enactments gen- 
eral in phraseology, but special in application. A good deal 
of the legislation of Congress, though general in terms, is 
necessarily particular in effect, and furnishes every tempta- 
tion to self seeking, and opportunity to venality. For ex- 
ample, the law that levies or takes off a duty on pig iron or 
salt, or that raises or lowers the excise on whiskey or tobacco, 
is often the occasion of more corruption in Congress, and more 
enriches the lobby, than any charter, subsidy or contract 
whatever. 

Moreover, special legislation is absolutely necessary in 
many cases. No capitol, navy yard, asylum, prison or other 
public institution can be located or built, no street opened or 
park laid out, or other public work inaugurated or furthered, 
without enactments of a special character. The appropriation 
bills of Congress and every State legislature are necessarily 
made up largely of such items : and it is the figures of these 
— as for canal repairs, armories, inebriate asylums, and the like 
in the State of New York — that provide the chief corruption 
fund in our politics. 



CAUSES AND REMEDIES SUGGESTED. 49 

Constitution Mending a Muddle. 

The correction of constitutions that is now going on has 
neither philosophy nor settled direction. Take the very im- 
portant matter of the appointment, as against the direct elec- 
tion by the people, of various public functionaries. Fifty years 
ago in all the states, and much later than that in most of them, 
the judiciary, and such state officers as treasurer and attorney- 
general, were chosen by the legislature, or appointed by the 
governor, with or without the consent and co-operation of the 
senate, or of a council specially established for that purpose. 
In the State of New York town justices and county sheriffs 
were created in this way down to 1824. All such offices have 
since been made elective : and there even arose a clamor to 
have postmasters, collectors of customs and public notaries also 
chosen by popular vote. But now, seeing how badly direct 
popular election works, the tide is turning, and appointment is 
coming into vogue again, the people demanding, as it were, to 
be saved from themselves. Only in the matter of the choice of 
the federal executive is there still some call from political the- 
orists for an extension of the function of the ballot-box. 

Alarmed by the narrow escape from civil war that we so 
lately had when nothing was to be found in constitution, law 
or practice to determine who was elected President, inventive 
minds have since put before the public no end of plans for 
avoiding the recurrence of such a danger. To my mind the 
last that I have seen, suggested by some bold Democratic law- 
yer in New York who would have a President chosen once a 
month by lot from among the members of Congress, is about 
as promising as the more complicated devices that have been 
evolved in the studies of college presidents. All are equally idle. 

So, a strong central government is called for in one quarter, 
and, in another, more local autonomy. One way tried this 
year, another is demanded next. One city wants to have its 
affairs managed by commissions appointed by the state legisla- 
ture ; another, having already found this contrivance to partake 
of the general rot, demands to be let alone. Single election 
districts are exchanged for multiple, and then changed back 
again. Salaries are reduced, to lessen the temptation to office- 



50 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

seeking ; and then increased, so that public men can afford to 
be honest. Terms of office are shortened, and then lengthened. 
When individual responsibility is lost in the numerousness of 
a legislative body, it is sought to be restored by making the 
number smaller : these found to be more easily bought up, 
the difficulty of purchase is sought to be increased by increas- 
ing the number to be bought. No end of guards and wards, of 
checks and counter-checks, are tried, and fail : the failure soon 
forgotten, they are tried again. The South rehearses the ex- 
periments of the North, and the West dons the cast-off gar- 
ments of the East. Every where is tumult and see-saw, and, 
the more is done, the more needs to be done. 

A noticeable feature in this fluttering struggle of democ- 
racy for its own salvation is the introduction of many new 
topics into our constitutions. But to extend organic law be- 
yond the limits pointed out on a previous page (42) is to shackle 
freedom and embarrass progress. Said Calhoun, " The prin- 
ciples of government solely concern the organization and 
distribution of power ; the rest is but expediency and senti- 
ment." In disregard of this important truth, our latest State 
constitutions are big with ordinances that belong to the 
statute book. Thus Pennsylvania has left to its legislature 
little more than to make certain matter-of-course appropria- 
tions, and vote taxes to meet them. But if she thus makes it 
pure, she also makes it impotent, and ousts from function the 
spirit of the times. The ruined reputation of legislatures is 
the explanation and excuse for such a limitation of their 
functions : but let it be remembered that when constitutional 
conventions shall do the work of legislatures they will soon be 
collected by the same bad influences as legislatures are, and 
discover the same vices. 

For the last few years 

Civil Service Reform 

has attracted a great deal of attention as a supposed means of 
effecting a material correction of public administration. The 
name is promising, but the thing itself is but a quack-salve, 
and can never touch our deep disease. Its two principal fea- 
tures are, (1) the application of a competitive examination on 



CAUSES AND REMEDIES SUGGESTED. 5 I 

scholarship in the selection of post-office clerks, inspectors of 
customs, gaugers of whiskey and other the like inferior officers 
in the civil service ; and (2) greater stability of office-tenure. 

Now, as to the former, there is in fact at present no 
material lack of sufficient education for the work that is to be 
done in any of these inferior departments of the public business. 
Indeed, so general is this grade of attainments, that if a man 
able to perform the duties of any office of the above mentioned 
sort were advertised for in the evening papers of Rochester or 
Richmond, a hundred fit applicants would be on hand the 
next morning. Therefore some other criterion of preference 
among them would have to be resorted to. To employ for 
that purpose the possession of knowledge or accomplishments 
wholly extraneous to the matter in hand — such as familiarity 
with geography, in the case of an applicant whose official busi- 
ness would be to add up columns of figures ; with the consti- 
tution for a weigher or a gauger of merchandise ; with history 
for a post-office clerk, or with the niceties of grammar for a 
policeman — is not only ridiculous but essentially unjust, as 
standing in the way of worthier grounds of choice, such as 
family needs, high character, services already rendered to the 
country or society in other fields, and the like. 

If this competitive examination could also be applied to 
determine the comparative integrity, industry and understand- 
ing of these applicants for office ; and, above all, if it could be 
used to test the qualifications of candidates for Congress and 
other legislatures, and for high executive stations, then indeed 
it would inaugurate a reform of the civil service worth while. 
But this is impossible. 

Besides, who shall examine the examiners ? Evidently, so 
long as these are the mere arbitrary selection of the Postmaster 
General or of the Collector of Customs, they will take good 
care that their determinations do not clash with his wishes ; 
and so long as they are the appointees of a party they will do 
partisan work. 

As to more permanence of office-tenure, which is the second 
advertised intention of Civil Service Reform, it is a matter of 
very little consequence to the public welfare in the only class 
of cases to which Civil Service Reform has been proposed to 



52 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

very little consequence in the only class of cases to which it is 
proposed to be applied ; that is, to minor executive function- 
aries, whose duties, whether as postmaster, officer of customs 
or clerk of public works, can generally be learned in a week by 
any man of ordinary intelligence. Moreover, how long will 
this feature of the project survive the coming into power of a 
new party? or even of another ring of politicians? When 
such a change shall take place, Civil Service Reform will mean 
simply a new distribution of offices. 

The present Administration has grafted three new scions 
upon the original stock ; viz : a rule forbidding that more than 
one member of a family shall have an appointment in any de- 
partment of the public business ; a rule that office-holders shall 
take no part in the work of political organization ; and a repu- 
diation of the influence of Congressmen over appointments. 
The first is silly. The second is an insult and a degradation to 
the office-holder, an unlawful piece of tyranny, and an impeach- 
ment of the free principles of democratic government. As to 
the third, it is evident that the President and his cabinet can 
seldom have any personal acquaintance with candidates for 
office, scattered as they are from one end of the country to the 
other, but must perforce depend on the advice of somebody. 
Now, on whom can they so safely rely for this advice as on the 
chosen representative in Congress of the people among whom 
the appointment is to be made, and who can hold their Member 
directly responsible for the fitness of the appointment ? 

But the whole matter is hardly worthy even of this short 
discussion ; and would not have received it but for the 
prominence that the false pretences of politicians have been 
able to give the subject in the public mind. I say " false," 
because, while for near the length of two presidential terms the 
Federal administration has pretended to be gradually bringing 
this reform into use, it would still be difficult to put the finger 
on a single case where it has been honestly and serviceably 
applied. 

Investigations and Punishments. 

Under the mistaken idea that crimes against the body 
politic can be prevented by prosecutions and penalties as 



CAUSES AND REMEDIES HERETOFORE SUGGESTED. 53 

readily as offences against private persons, new enactments 
against them are continually heaped upon the statute book, 
and new investigations undertaken to find them out. Our 
public bodies, like Italian lazzaroni, are busy hunting their 
own vermin. The multitude of these inquiries and prosecu- 
tions is a confession of the prevalence of official crime, while 
the general immunity of the criminals is a measure of the 
impotence of justice. Once in a great while a defaulting 
treasurer or collector is forced to disgorge a moiety of his 
plunder ; a whiskey ring is decimated by exile to Canada, or 
even by imprisonment — till a pardon comes, — or a thieving post- 
office clerk, if he have no influential friends, gets the full penalty 
of the law ; but the great mass of the trusted functionaries 
that forage on the commonwealth escape unquestioned. Espe- 
cially is that great class of public men secure of immunity who 
sell their votes or their signatures, farm out offices, make it 
easy for contractors, and levy tolls on whatever industry or 
enterprise is anyway dependent on their official action. They 
are protected by the clumsiness of statutes, and the difficulty 
of proof; by party faith, the fraternity of corruption, and the 
honor of thieves ; and by the powerlessness, the discourage- 
ment, and the demoralization, in some degree, of public senti- 
ment. The man who robs one of our great Express Companies 
is certain of arrest, conviction and punishment; but, in the 
whole matter of official crime, vigilance has lost its eyesight 
and oaths their sanctity, and the sword of the law has become 
a lath. Judges that ought to wear the brand of convicted 
felons are allowed to hide their guilt by resignation ; legisla- 
tors that merit the stocks still sit in seats of honor ; and they 
who handle the public moneys shake in our faces, fearless and 
unabashed, the unlawful profits of their opportunities. Such 
instances of public wrong as Erie Railroad legislation at 
Albany, or Transcontinental at Washington, though stupen- 
dous in variety of faithlessness, in the size of the robbery and 
in the number and distinction of those engaged in it, were still 
more stupendous in the immunity of the criminals. Their 
guilt was shown by a superfluity of evidence, the very pass 
books of the conspirators were brought into court, and the 
accused stood at the bar, disdaining flight ; and yet, so palsied 



54 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

was justice in arm and tongue, they went forth untouched and 
almost unrebuked. 

Nor does the future promise better. The devices of poli- 
ticians, as government is now constituted, will always outstrip 
the efforts of the people to thwart them. How to oust bad 
men from power is not the problem, but how to keep them 
from getting into power. Any less undertaking will be but to 
repeat the labor of Sisyphus. 

As vain are the attempts that are lately made to 

Outlaw the Lobby. 

If the legislator were locked up in a solitary cell, the lob- 
byist would whisper in his ear through the keyhole, and the 
turnkey would bring him bribes. To a certain extent, as 
already suggested, the lobby is a legitimate and meritorious 
influence in legislation, as bringing to its aid and instruction 
outside intelligence and zeal. The only security against a 
vicious lobby is the virtue of legislators themselves. 

Bi-partisan Commissions. 

It has been undertaken to better public administration by 
dividing it up equally between parties, in Boards of Commis- 
sioners ; but, notoriously, with poor results. The worst con- 
federation of politicians that the country has ever seen got 
its start in an act of the State legislature in Tweed's time 
that gave to the county of New York a board of supervisors 
made up equally from both parties. Vice, cohabiting with 
vice, can never father virtue. 

Special Elections. 

It is also attempted to hinder the present injurious intru- 
sion of national party into local affairs by separate election 
days. In Illinois every town of above two thousand inhabi- 
tants holds a special election for school commissioners. In my 
own little city democracy is mustered three times annually : 
in March for a municipal, in June for a school, and in Novem- 
ber for a federal, State and county election. But the sole 
result has been increased expenditures, and the facilitation of 
place-hunting. 



CAUSES AND REMEDIES HERETOFORE SUGGESTED. 55 

Plebiscites. 

Disgusted with legislatures, some demand that all important 
public measures should be referred to direct popular vote, as 
at least to an honest tribunal. How badly the people fare 
when they thus take difficult matters into their own hands is 
sufficiently instanced by the still fresh history of railroad 
bonding, through which so many communities have wrought 
their own impoverishment. The false plebiscites of Napoleon 
the Third were not more subversive of right, or more injuri- 
ous to public interests, than has generally proved the vote of 
the people in this country on high questions of public policy. 

Non-Partisan Organizations. 
Seeing that parties and politicians are obviously the chief 
causes of our difficulties, the better class of people have often 
endeavored to combine among themselves to resist these 
influences, and to select their own candidates for office. For 
this purpose " Citizens " meetings are called, " Committees of 
Seventy " and " Councils of Political Reform " established, and 
" Taxpayers " and " Independent " tickets put into the field. 
But all such efforts have been merely spasmodic, and have 
proved utterly impotent to stem the settled current of our 
politics. Thus the famous New York Committee of Seventy, 
instituted at a period of extreme public alarm and indignation, 
and composed of the most respectable material, dispersed itself 
in utter discouragement after two years of vain effort to correct 
the politics of the city. " This," as wrote Mayor Havemeyer 
to Mr James M. Brown, the president of that association, " was 
an abandonment of the cause of reform by the picked citizens 
of New York, and a confession that we are helpless and pros- 
trate before the trained and unscrupulous politicians of both 
parties." The reason and inevitableness of the failure of all 
such efforts will be set forth in the next chapter. 

Regulation of the Caucus by Law. 

Viewed that the party caucus is the root of our politics, it 

has been attempted to correct its fraudulence by putting it 

under the guardianship of law. In 1866 the legislature of New 

York passed an act to punish bribery, intimidation and fraud 



56 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

at the caucus: Maryland did the like in 1867; and various 
other States at various times. Ohio has even gone so far 
as to prescribe the manner of its organization and procedure. 
How utterly useless for its purification all such enactments 
have proved, needs not to be described to any intelligent citi- 
zen. They are everywhere a dead letter. 

Everybody must go to the Caucus. 

We are told, also, that we are ourselves to blame for the 
bad state of our affairs, because we neglect to gather at the 
caucus in full force, and take it out of the hands of the few 
self-seeking politicians who now control it. Why we do not 
attend to this will be made clear in another place. Suffice it 
now to say, that, in point of fact, a large majority of the better 
class of voters have concluded not to attend caucuses any 
more, and that neither the exhortations of the press, nor the 
objurgations of the pulpit are likely to change their minds. 

It has been proposed to defend ourselves against the 
caucus by going back to 

Stump Nominations, 

such as formerly prevailed at the South, and no doubt aided its 
long ascendency in our politics. That way is perhaps better 
than the present, but there are plenty of objections to it. 
These however need not be discussed ; for it would be as im- 
possible to set up that system anew to any large extent, either 
at the South or the North, as to restore feudalism in France. 

Moral Cures. 

Many look to some moral cure. " Good government," 
says Boston's Fourth of July orator, (1873) "is after all a 
question of individual morality." " We must reform our- 
selves first," says another teacher. Mr. Carl Schurz, in a 
popular lecture, lately laid our troubles to " that levity of 
thinking in our time which is calculated to obscure the dis- 
tinction between right and wrong," and hopes for its removal 
only through " a renovation of our domestic life" ! And so on. 

If the difficulty be indeed of any such kind, its correction 
looks pretty hopeless ; for our politics are degenerating much 



CAUSES AND REMEDIES HERETOFORE SUGGESTED. 57 

faster than our morality is improving ; faster, too, than it can 
be expected to improve; for, though the institutions of govern- 
ment may be changed in a day, human nature alters but slowly. 
The fact is, however, that these thinkers have got the matter 
wrong end first. So far as our political and our private life 
have any influence on each other, it is politics that debauches 
the people, and not the people politics. 

Others rest their hopes on more Religion. 

In particular, they demand that God should be expressly re- 
cognized in the constitution, to appease his offended majesty. 
But history does not teach us that an infusion of the religious 
sentiment, of whatever sort, has ever been a benefit to politics. 
Look at the murderous politico-religious war that is now going 
on in the East ! Our own pious statesmen have proved no 
better than our wicked. 

Education. 

A good many still think that democracy can be educated 
out of this mire. The "three R's," now pretty universally dif- 
fused, having proved unequal to the task, Messrs. Woolsey, 
Hawley, Adams and McCosh appear to lean their faith on 
better college education. But the fact is that nothing is more 
over-rated than the virtue of schooling. Education can teach 
a man to write, but it can never teach him to make his mark. 
Of half mankind it may almost be said that the more they 
know the less they know. Education never made an honest 
man out of a rogue, a truth-teller out of a liar, or a kind man 
out of an unfeeling. To expect the restoration of virtue to our 
politics by book learning, mental discipline and cultivation, is 
to look for the renovation of old decay by broth, corsets and 
paint. 

Mob Law. 

A sterner remedy has been proposed. Many a law-abiding 
man, in his indignation and despair, is ready to welcome mob 
law. Said an honored ex-member of the Supreme Court of 
the State of New York, instructed and sobered by seventy 
years of observation and reflection : " I see no cure for our pub- 
lic corruption but to lynch the malefactors ; and I am ready to 



58 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

lend a hand." This remedy, though sharp, would not be sure. 
Once, it is true, in San Francisco, the people did turn suc- 
cessfully upon their political masters. But the situation and 
character of that community at the time of the Vigilance 
Committee were to the last degree exceptional. Not till the 
narrow size and isolation, the habit of individual self depend- 
ence and spontaneity, the intelligence, audacity, enterprise 
and desperation that characterized that community of young 
and mostly unhampered men shall somewhere again come to- 
gether can mob law again be profitable. For New York, 
Chicago or New Orleans, bad off as they are, to resort to it, 
would be to use a remedy more dangerous even than the dis- 
ease. For a State or the Nation to attempt it, would of course 
be suicidal, even if it were possible. 

No Hope in all These. 

But these, and the many other various explanations and 
remedies for our evil case that have been heretofore offered to 
the anxious inquiries of the people, hardly deserve so much 
attention. The explanations are incompetent, and the reme- 
dies nugatory. He who expects to see statesmanship and 
fidelity to the public interests restored in city, State or nation 
by Civil Service Reform ; the restraint of special legislation ; 
long presidential terms or short ; a new settlement of functions 
among aldermen, commissioners and mayors ; the election or 
the appointment of judges ; closer investigations or severer 
punishments ; an educational test, a religious test or a pro- 
perty test ; or any other the like petty and partial devices, 
would expect to cure the yellow fever by changing a man's 
shirt. Only to the uninstructed mind are the phenomena of 
political life, as of physical, a medley of instances. The polit- 
ical rot in all the larger spheres of government is identical 
and pervading ; it must own some single cause, as dominating 
as gravity itself; and it must find a single cure. 

New Machinery of Democracy Required. 

The truth is, the machinery of American Democracy needs 
to be rebuilt — not with new material, nor on a different foun- 
dation, but after a better model. All mere revamping of 



CAUSES AND REMEDIES HERETOFORE SUGGESTED. 59 

constitutions and jumping of charters will be vain. The old 
engine that once carried us smoothly along, has now, by pro- 
gress of time and change of circumstances, become rusty, 
distorted and unfit. It will not be enough to patch the boiler, 
or oil the bearings, or rub up the brasses. We must either 
lumber along as we do now, surrounded by constant perils, or, 
discarding what serves us so ill, and returning to the raw 
material itself out of which political society is built, must find 
and employ a better system of popular government. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED. 

IT is generally agreed among intelligent observers, and is 
indeed beyond dispute, that the chief immediate cause of 
the misbehavior of democracy in this country is the domination 
in our affairs of Organizations of Politicians. But this ex- 
planation only sets the problem a step farther back. How has 
Political Organization obtained this mastery ? Our constitu- 
tions purport to put the people in power : through what loop- 
hole in their construction has this spurious authority intruded ? 
and why are we so powerless to drive the usurper out ? I 
know not where this fundamental inquiry has been well 
answered ; nor, almost, where its answer has been attempted. 
It will be undertaken in this chapter. 

In the first place, it is evident that anything that displays 
such steady, wide pervading and resistless vigor as Political 
Organization does, must be more than an artifice or a con- 
spiracy. Compared with it in this regard, Free Masonry or 
the Order of the Jesuits, crowning examples of skillful device 
and combination, were as impotent and frail in the height of 
their success as children's cob-houses. 

It is evident, also, that the power that has been able, with- 
out violating the law, to seize from the people the manage- 
ment of affairs, and make us do the thing we would not ; and 
that parcels out among its company, year after year, all public 
function, leaving to the mass of voters only to sign its com- 
missions, must find its opportunity in some great defect i'n the 
present construction of democracy. 

Finally, the foothold of this false pretender must be sought 
for somewhere in the present relation of the general will to 
governmental function. Democracy can make so great a fail- 



THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED. 6l 

ure only because of some bad mechanism, whereby its strong 
and virtuous hands are hindered from actually reaching the 
helm of affairs. Its principles are irrefragable ; the fault must 
be with its methods. Let us search for the defect — not with 
the star-gazing implements of theory, nor with the spade, 
deep-delving in buried history — but by the near and level light 
of our own experience. It may be that we shall find there 
that experimentum cruets which is the touch-stone alike of 
chemic and political truth. 

Now, it is the matter of elections alone that connects the 
people with public authority. This is the shafting to which 
the intentions of democracy are geared at the one end, and 
political results at the other. To elect good men to office 
is to have good government. Vain are laws and constitu- 
tions unless they accomplish this. This proposition may sound 
like a truism ; but nevertheless, if borne in mind, it will help 
us forward, like an axiom in geometry, toward more difficult 
conclusions. 

Now, the prevailing mode of establishing political au- 
thority among us is by direct popular vote. We have wit- 
nessed the operation of this method of democratic rule in 
various spheres and under various circumstances; where has it 
worked best ? and where worst ? Is there any condition the 
presence or absence of which has seemed to make a good 
selection of public functionaries in this way easy, or difficult— 
the rule, or the exception ? To answer this question will cer- 
tainly help us along, and may even plant our feet on solid 
ground. % 

If we survey the career of American democracy in its 
various fields, we shall find a class of cases in which the results 
of popular election have satisfied every reasonable desire. — But 
we shall also find that this favorable issue has not depended on 
any of those elements that have been commonly regarded as 
the guarantee or keystone of democratic success. It has not 
followed upon the virtuousness or the intelligence of a com- 
munity ; for surely neither Philadelphia nor Cincinnati, the 
State of New York nor the State of Iowa, is lacking in either of 
these particulars, though from the aspect of their politics you 
might think so. Nor has it happened particularly where long 



62 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

experience has trained the people in political function, or 
where they come to its discharge free from the trammels of 
prejudice and prescription. In the sombre picture of our poli- 
tics Kansas shows not darker than Pennsylvania, Louisiana 
than Nevada, Brooklyn than Chicago, or San Francisco than 
Baltimore. About equally has the old commonwealth of 
Massachusetts been robbed by Hartford and Erie and the 
Hoosac Tunnel, and young Wisconsin by farm mortgages to 
railroads. As little has it been peculiarly where wealth, or 
where scantiness abounds. California in its most golden days 
was only saved from anarchy by anarchy, nor is the soil of 
New Hampshire or Arkansas too sterile to feed corruption fat. 
Neither is luxury or simplicity the cause. Proud and cultivated 
New York is no better, and no worse off in the matter of poli- 
tics than Omaha, or any other rude city of the West. Nor is 
it education that has determined the matter. Virginia or 
South Carolina before the war, where not half of the voters 
knew how to read and write, had no occasion to be ashamed of 
their political conduct, while scores of places where schools 
abound, as in all our Northern cities, are miracles of incompe- 
tence and ravage in public affairs. 

Experimentum Cruets. 
Not with any one nor all of these, nor with any other of 
the various conditions that have been suggested as essential 
have coincided the chief successes of democracy in this country, 
nor on them, therefore, could they have depended. The true 
account is very simple, and lies on the surface ; and thereby, 
perhaps, has the more readily escaped the scrutiny of deep 
peering philosophy. The great instructive fact in our politics 
is that 

Popular Elections Work Well in Small and III in LARGE 

Constituencies. 
Nowhere have political communities ever conducted them- 
selves better, or even perhaps as well, than have the townships, 
boroughs, villages and school districts of this country. In the 
management of their purely local interests they have almost 
been models of skillfulness, justice, economy and progress. 
New roads have been built where they were needed, the 



THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED. 63 

school and the school-house have been suited to fair require- 
ment ; good public functionaries have been selected, and have 
staid long in their places, yearly improving in skill ; and the 
public money has seldom been lost or squandered. In short, 
there is no particular in the whole circle of political merits that 
would not be traced in their description. So, the county 
boards of town supervisors in the State of New York, despite 
the disturbing and advancing invasion of national politics, are 
still such a specimen of success as neither the high Senate at 
Washington nor any other representation of large constituencies 
can compare with. In these narrow fields it was that American 
democracy was nursed and grew her charms, and here alone may 
still be seen the lineaments of her native beauty. 

On the other hand, it is notorious that popular election 
does not generally work well in its larger fields, such as State, 
city, Congressional and other populous constituencies. Sel- 
dom is it in these that the fittest men are chosen to office ; 
and, by consequence, their business is seldom either intelli- 
gently, zealously or honestly conducted. Here flourish par- 
tisanship, rotation in office, the successful self-seeking of 
politicians, incompetency and corruption, official tyranny and 
official sloth. 

An illustration and partial proof of this relation between the 
size of popular constituencies and the fitness of the men that 
they get to represent them, may be seen in the contrast between 
the customary behavior of the legislatures of Vermont and 
Massachusetts on the one hand, and of New York and Pennsyl- 
vania on the other. In the former cases a Member of Assembly 
is chosen by an average constituency of two or three hundred 
voters, and, in the latter, of four or five thousand. Accordingly, 
while the legislatures of New York and Pennsylvania have for 
near a generation been a chief opprobrium of American democ- 
racy, the legislatures of the other two States are still compar- 
atively respectable. It is not claimed that in these latter the 
lobby is not lately getting some foothold, nor that they display 
much insight or comprehension about the public business, but 
only that they do pretty well, and, especially, that they do 
about the best, on the whole, that they know how. 



64 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

The Causes of this Difference. 

We are here on the threshold of a great discovery. To find 
the reason of this disparity between the successfulness of pop- 
ular elections in a narrow field and in a wide one is to solve the 
problem of the republic. 

Desire, knowledge and power are the three qualifications of 
human success. In which of these are the people, as members 
of large political constituencies, lacking, that they make so great 
a failure ? Surely not in the first ; for everybody wants good 
government. Is it skill that they need ? or power ? Do they 
know no better? or, by cause of some impediment, can they do 
no better? Are they blind? or are they bound ? They are in 
fact both blind and bound. Let us consider these disabilities 
in turn. 

In the first place 

The Intelligence of the average voter is entirely unequal to 
the proper selection of the functionaries of Large Constit- 
uencies. 

To vote intelligently we must know not only whom we are 
voting for, but what we are voting about : — we must have both 
some acquaintance with the candidate, and some understand- 
ing of the business that it is proposed to set him at. Either 
of these qualifications wanting, a good selection of our rulers at 
the ballot box must be, at best, mere matter of chance. 

Now, in the case of towns and such like narrow constit- 
uencies, this sufficient knowledge, in both of its branches, nigh 
universally obtains. The voter both understands what the town 
clerk, selectman, overseer of the poor, school committee-man 
or pathmaster will have to do, and is well informed, — either by 
personal intercourse or by that neighborhood repute which is 
even a safer guide, — about the fitness of A or B to do it. Thus 
it happens that in these narrow precincts of democratic rule the 
man of character, discretion and authoritative mien is made 
moderator of the popular assembly; the exact man town clerk ; 
the upright man justice of the peace ; and so on through the 
whole list of civil functions : and this is the reason why the 



THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED. 65 

affairs of towns, villages, school districts and boroughs have 
ever been well managed. 

But in wide constituencies, on the other hand, neither 
branch of this intelligence is either actual or possible. In at least 
nine cases out of ten, the people are substantially ignorant both 
of the qualities of the candidate that they vote for, and of the 
business that he is to undertake. 

As to the men themselves whom we help elect to the State 
Senate, or the Federal House of Representatives, to a Governor- 
ship, or to the charge of prisons or canals, we know almost 
nothing whatever. I have, probably, much better information 
of this sort than most of my neighbors ; but at the State 
election of 1873 (when no Governor was to be chosen,) not 
a name was on the ticket of either party that I had ever heard 
of before. The two candidates for the State Senate in my own 
senatorial district, for example, were as much unknown to me as 
though they lived in Japan. Even the wretched instruction of 
the newspaper reporter, and the mushroom repute that the arts 
of politicians can so quickly raise, were utterly lacking for my 
guidance. The cast of a die was as good a law as I had to go 
by in choosing the one or the other. 

How absolute and notorious is our want of knowledge about 
the men we vote for in the larger political constituencies, an il- 
lustration is furnished, that would be ludicrous if the matter were 
not so grave, in a letter addressed (Oct. nth, 1872,) to the elec- 
tors of the State of New York by Charles O'Conor, James Emott, 
W. H. Peckham and Joseph H. Choate. In that communication 
those distinguished and patriotic gentlemen offer themselves as 
guides to voters throughout the State " to enable them to select 
good men to vote for among party candidates for Member of 
Assembly!' Now, if the people really know a tithe as much 
about candidates in large constituencies as our present sys- 
tem of elections in effect assumes that they do, this prop- 
osition had been the height of impudence and absurdity. But 
it was in fact neither immodest nor unreasonable ; for there 
is not one voter in twenty that might not profitably have 
listened to it. And, mark ! if in a constituency of that size, 
comprising not more than thirty thousand people, the informa- 
tion of the average citizen about candidates is so greatly at 



66 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

fault, how poorly must it answer when members of Congress, 
governors, and other State officers are to be chosen ! 

But information about candidates is not our only lack in such 
cases. We are equally ignorant of the business that is to be com- 
mitted to their charge. The average voter has neither capacity 
nor opportunity for intelligent judgment about the currency 
or the silver question, about free trade, Indian policy, the man- 
agement of public works, criminal law, municipal construction, 
or any other of the many difficult inquiries that now con- 
stantly await solution. This is why the people seldom know 
whether or not a public man has served them well ; and, ac- 
cordingly, pay him neither due gratitude for worthy, nor proper 
condemnation for unworthy deeds. 

In view of this undeniable and inevitable ignorance of the 
great body of voters as to both men and measures in the 
political business of all large constituencies, the proposition of 
a member of the New York Constitutional Convention of 1846 
to draw public functionaries by lot, in copy of a groping idea 
of the French Revolution, looks not so absurd. 

Illustration in the Election of the Judiciary by the People. 

The foregoing argument is forcibly confirmed by the in- 
stance of the sort of judges, as compared with other represent- 
atives of large constituencies, that popular election produces. 
It will surprise many readers, accustomed to lament the recent 
innovation of making judges elective, when I assert that in 
no other of its larger fields does democratic choice work as 
well as in this. But the fact is indisputable. No man can 
deny that the higher judges of the State of New York are far 
better qualified for their station than are her legislators, her 
executive functionaries, her representatives at Washington, or 
her municipal councillors. We put plenty of nincompoops 
at other business, but we seldom put other than good law- 
yers upon the bench. The reason is not far to seek. It is, in 
sum, that popular opinion has better means of guidance in the 
election of judges than it has anywhere else. For, in the first 
place, every voter comprehends that a judge should be an ex- 
pert in the law. This narrows the circle of possible candidates, 
not only to lawvers, but to lawyers of experience. In the next 



THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED. 6j 

place, lawyers are better known to the people than any other 
class of men. They are constantly submitted to public scrutiny 
in the court house, a place attractive to everybody, and where 
imposition has less chance than any where else on earth. The 
conversations of the court house steps, the discussions of the 
jury room, and even the shrugs of the members of the bar, assist 
the voter's judgment. This is why Political Organization sel- 
dom dares to set up unfit candidates for the judiciary, saving it 
somewhat from the degradation and disrespect that attend 
every other department of public administration. 

The General Will in Large Constituencies is Impotent with- 
out Organizers. 

But this lack of popular intelligence is not the only difficulty 
of democracy as now constructed in large constituencies. It 
is not only impossible for us to act intelligently, but it is out 
of the question for us to act at all, to any effect, without the 
help of agents in the selection of candidates for office, even if 
each voter knows whom and what he wants. There must be 
go-betweens to bring opinions and purposes together. The 
individual vote is but a chaotic atom unless it be cast in con- 
cert with others. To secure this, previous intercommunication, 
combination and compromise are necessary. Not otherwise 
can the major popular will be developed and empowered. In 
towns, boroughs and other small communities all this comes 
about spontaneously, by means of neighborhood intercourse and 
acquaintance. In these little camps of democracy the rank 
and file are thus all capable of themselves, needing neither com- 
manding officer, adjutant nor headquarters. But when a city, 
or the populous ward of a city, a Congressional district, a 
county, or a State comes to choose its functionaries, the case is 
far different. No development or adjustment of opinion, nor 
concert of action at the polls, such as alone will enable voters 
of the same general way of thinking to exert their proper 
strength, is any way possible without special attention being 
given to the matter by somebody. 

Take the instance of a Congressional district : Here are 
fifteen or twenty thousand voters, scattered over hundreds, or, 
often, thousands of square miles, and with no occasion or op- 



68 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

portunity for general intercourse ; or, worse still, temporarily 
piled together in some crowded city, where a man seldom 
knows his next door neighbor even by name, or speaks from 
one election to another with half a dozen out of the multitude 
with whom he is to co-operate at the polls, — how in these 
cases can spontaneously come about such comparison of views, 
harmonization of purposes, and concert of action as are needed 
to enable the will of the majority to find substantial expression ? 
Let those who claim that our present system of elections is 
either sound or democratic, answer this question. 

In the case of larger constituencies the argument is still 
more convincing. The constitution of the State says : " Voters, 
make your selection for Governor." This is but to call us to 
play a farce ; for almost never is there a citizen whose superior 
fitness for that office is so widely recognized that the majority 
of the people would spontaneously vote for him ; — and, till the 
majority somehow come together, democracy is in the lurch. 
Plenty of aspirants to the place there always will be, each with 
a following of friends and admirers ; but there is now no way, 
outside of party organization, of estimating the comparative sup- 
port of each, and thus settling who ought to step back. Even 
when a major preference exists, it has no way of arriving at self- 
consciousness, or of leading its scattered forces to victory. 
Without some assisting means of ascertainment and combina- 
tion, the intentions of the most intelligent State in New Eng- 
land would be as impotent as the vague instincts of the new- 
enfranchised negroes without the aid of the carpet-bagger to 
organize them. 

The present arrangement for choosing a President is even 
more ridiculous in this regard. The letter of the law intends 
that each voter should select one man in each Congressional dis- 
trict of his State, and two for the State at large, to represent 
him in this important business. Now, aside from the fact that 
not one voter in a thousand is capable of discharging this duty 
decently well on his own knowledge and judgment, it is too 
plain to need argument that the main popular will, or anything 
near it, could never reach expression in that way. If each voter 
were actually left, as the law leaves him, to fix his own ticket 
for Presidential Electors in any State, what a pretty muss 



THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED. 69 

would democracy be in ! There are no two men in the State 
of New York that would vote together, nor a single Congres- 
sional district where any citizen would have a decent plurality 

of voices. 

Hence Political Organization. 

It is in this latter defect of our present system that politi- 
cal organization takes its root. The people's necessity is the 
politician's opportunity. The party organizer is no mere inter- 
loper. His aid is invoked by democracy itself as now con- 
structed. The machinery of our present politics supplies a 
want. It is more a growth than a device ; rather a rally of 
nature than an exploit of art. Its paternity has been laid to 
the Albany Regency, but that distinguished cabal was at best 
but its foster-parent, — as the domestic bird sometimes warms 
into life the embryo king of the air. The absolute impotence 
of the general will, under our present system of elections, of 
itself to unite upon its functionaries in large constituencies, 
creates that vacuum which nature abhors ; and a supplement- 
ary agency, as spontaneous as irresistible, has poured in to fill 
the void. 

Thus it happens that the people, blindly groping otherwise, 
are now led about by Rings of Politicians. 

The Three Frauds of our Present System of Democracy. 

In fine, I bring against the plan of direct popular election 
in large constituencies the accusation that it involves three lies. 
It supposes (1) that the elector knows whom he is voting for, 
(2) that he comprehends what he is voting about, and (3) that 
his vote will have its proper weight without preliminary con- 
' sultation and arrangement with other voters ; each of which 
assumptions in the vast majority of cases is absolutely false. 
The present actual fact is, that, at the dictate of leaders whom we 
have not chosen, we vote for candidates whom we do not know, to 
discharge duties that we can not understand. Thus our system 
huddles in its bosom as many falsehoods as Csesarism, com- 
munism and Bourbonism altogether. If good government can 
stand on such fraudulent tripod, then truth itself will prove a 
liar. If the science of politics have nothing better than this 
to offer, then let it forever hold its peace. Here is the bad 
mechanism, the rotten spot, the causing cause, heretofore un- 



JO THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

proclaimed, at least with any loud distinctness, in search of 
which we set out. Here is the fountain — let patriotism mark 
the statement, and logic dispute it if it dare — of all our woes. 
Surely it is an ample source. It accounts for things otherwise 
unaccountable, — for the general boil and dirtiness of our poli- 
tics ; for fraudulent elections and for bad appointments, for 
high taxes and for repudiation, for the follies of legislation, 
the wrongs of judgment and the weakness of execution that so 
constantly mark our present career ; for the seeming general 
apathy of the people, and for their impotence when spasmodi- 
cally aroused ; and for a thousand other things that work damage, 
danger, ignominy and chagrin to American democracy. This 
it is that explains why the shining promises of the Western 
world are so darkened in the eyes of Europe, and why democ- 
racy in all past time has turned out a mirage, or even that 
ignis fatuus that but draws its followers constantly deeper into 
the mire. 

The special influence of each of these fallacies varies with 
different cases, though never in any large constituency is it 
wholly lacking, however obscured it may be to the common 
view by superficial mixed phenomena. For a single example : 
the voters in a ward of some small city, like Yonkers or Rich- 
mond, know pretty well what citizens are fittest for aldermen, 
and have a fair idea of what an alderman has to do, so that 
there is here no serious lack of competency about either " men" 
or " measures." But the special difficulty in such cases is, that 
there is no way for the majority, or any considerable portion 
of them, to unite upon candidates at the polls without some 
means of collecting their opinions and organizing their strength, 
— which our present constitutions fail to provide. 

This Misbehavior of our Present System not Anticipated. 

That the founders of the republic did not foresee this ill- 
demeanor of their plan of democracy is no way strange. Large 
popular constituencies were almost unknown to them. They 
had no cities of much size. Only in two of the smallest of the 
Colonies, — Rhode Island and Connecticut, — was the chief 
magistrate elected by the people. Ail other high functionaries, 
such as councillors and judges, were everywhere appointed by 
the crown, the proprietor or the governor. In towns, school 



THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED. 71 

districts, parishes and borough alone had direct general suf- 
frage had much trial. Here its results left nothing to be 
desired. Most natural was it therefore, when the people at- 
tained to independence, to extend the method to wider spaces. 
The way that had led to a good choice of constables and 
selectmen would suffice, it was innocently thought, to choose 
Members of Congress and Governors by. But it was forgotten 
that the principles of construction that answer to bridge a 
streamlet may break down when a river is to be spanned. It 
has indisputably turned out that the method of democracy that 
did so well, and still does so well as applied to small communi- 
ties and their simple concerns, is unsuited to the wider fields 
and more complex relations of political society to which it has 
been extended. We have, in a sense, outgrown our clothes. 

Political Society in the Early Period of the Republic. 

But why, it may be asked, were we so long free from the 
tyranny of Political Organizations, if, as is argued above, they 
are a native product of the situation ? The answer is, that 
down to less than fifty years ago the American people were 
substantially under personal leadership. Colonial society was 
profoundly and pervasively impregnated with the principle of 
aristocracy. History, the traditions of the mother country, 
and the existing methods of government, all sustained the law 
of subordination in politics. Virginia and Connecticut were 
hardly less oligarchic, in sentiment and practice, than Norfolk 
and Devon. Opinion had its sampler from headquarters, and 
policy its laying-out. None but men of mark and standing 
aspired to public place. Political equality, it should be remem- 
bered, was then practically unknown in every part of the 
world. It was but the echo of distant history, the dream of 
closet speculation, or the vague yearning of instinct or sym- 
pathy. 

Accordingly, in none of the first State constitutions was 
suffrage made universal, even for the whites. On the contrary, 
in South Carolina, Virginia, Rhode Island, and many others of 
the new-born independencies, it was quite narrowly restricted ; 
and in New York it was far from complete down to thirty 
years ago. Meantime, the institution of slavery in half of the 



72 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

nation furnished an example of the political subjection of one 
class of men to another that could but strengthen the principle 
of aristocracy among the ruling race. Thus the " white trash " 
at the South were as much cyphers politically as the negroes 
themselves. 

The authority of the few over the many was not diminished, 
but rather augmented, by the events of the Revolution. That 
great political movement, like nigh every other of much 
account that history records, was the issue and ward of a few 
superior spirits, most of whom were already prominent on the 
public stage, and therefore the more readily attracted the sup- 
port of the people. The success of their bold undertaking gave 
new vigor to their influence, and crown to their authority, 
and, while their generation lasted, they maintained a virtual 
control over the fortunes of the young republic. It is worth 
notice, too, that this was not through military, but civil pres- 
tige chiefly, — not through the charms and accidents of war, 
but the sober considerations of civil life. As proof, we had no 
military President after Washington till Jackson, though we 
have had plenty of them since the advent of Political Organi- 
zation. This submission of the many to a few .pervaded all 
the spheres of democracy down to above forty years ago. I 
myself well remember when each State, county and town 
owned its political magnates, — men of character, public con- 
sideration, experience, social status, wealth, or other worthy 
attributes, — whose right and duty to manage the public busi- 
ness no man contested. 

In that happy period personal influence was nourished by 
personal intercourse. In Jefferson's time and neighborhood, 
according to his last and best biographer, Mr. Parton, it was 
the custom of public men to keep open house for all their con- 
stituents, and to visit them in turn. Said a Northern politi- 
cian of the old style to me : " When I was in public life, forty 
years ago, I knew by name and face every one of the three 
thousand voters in my Assembly district." 

Thus the chief elements of our politics down to the time of 
Monroe were personal power and personal adhesion. Some- 
thing, indeed, of these lingered thereafter, refusing to give place 
to the new order of things, till about the period when Clay, 



THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED. 73 

Webster, Calhoun, Wright and Benton went to a disappointed 
grave, taking with them a great part, it would seem, both of 
the political ambition of patriotic genius and of the hero-wor- 
ship of the common mind. 

Even parties were formerly little more than a clannish 
adhesion and following. Hence, in part, the marked bitterness 
of party strife in those days. 

To the same supreme influence of personality and position 
during the first half century of the republic it was in great part 
due that public station was somewhat customarily passed to 
the next in official order, as to a lawful heir. Thus President 
John Adams was Vice-president first ; as was also Jefferson. 
Madison was Jefferson's Secretary of State ; Monroe, Madi- 
son's ; and John Quincy Adams, Monroe's. In like manner 
most commonly the lieutenant-governor came to be governor ; 
the deputy, sheriff; and so on. 

Change about the time of Monroe. 

But all things change. The great attendance that had 
nursed the Revolution, and taught the nation how to walk, 
perished in its turn. Genius is seldom propagated, or social 
consideration bequeathed; nor could wealth be the monopoly 
of families while a fertile continent of soil, its solidest founda- 
tion, lay open to every occupancy. In the period of Monroe, 
all that stood for that strong authority of nature's chiefs which 
at the beginning of the century gave law to the young republic 
was a sort of bureaucracy, composed of inferior or degenerate 
stock, spiritless or decrepit. The inheritance of power had 
lapsed, and all political attachments were loosened from the 
minds of men. Meanwhile, beyond the Alleghanies, was gath- 
ering a vast multitude who had never seen Moses, and who 
looked for a new dispensation. The old king was dying, but 
the new was not yet alive. 

This was the famed " Era of good feeling." A calm perva- 
ded the political sky. Thus nature rests herself when she pre- 
pares a new birth. From this still peace, like some magnetic 
crystal from a neutral and quiet menstruum, issued the genius 
of Political Organization. 



74 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

History of Political Organization. 

Physiology tells us that life is developed from a centre ; and, 
accordingly, it was at the Federal capital that this new vitality 
first showed itself, pointing out, in Congressional party caucus, 
fit candidates for President and Vice-president, to uninformed, 
vague and helpless democratic wish. So clumsy and incom- 
petent were its early movements, as belongs to nature's 
highest products in their dawn, that the choice of a successor 
to Monroe lapsed from the hands of Presidential Electors, to 
whom by the intention of the framers of our government it 
belonged, and who alone could claim to represent the people 
for this purpose, to the House of Representatives. This defect 
of popular power, together with the discreditable and unsatis- 
factory contest that ensued in that body, at once exposed a 
fault in our written system, and gave countenance and stimulus 
to the unchartered power that was rising to supplant it. 

But the spirit of American democracy could not long be 
satisfied that a close corporation, like Congress, should initiate 
and direct its course in the vast and various career that was 
before it. Besides, the land was full of ambitious men who 
desired to compete for the preferments that now lay vacant. 
They revolted against the dictation of capitols. Their strength 
was at home, and they demanded that nominations for office 
should originate there. This was fair to them, and fair to the 
people at large. 

But how, in large constituencies, should popular sentiment 
be sounded, or express itself? Obviously, the body of a party, 
and still more of the whole people, could not gather in person 
at one place to settle upon a candidate for governor, member 
of Congress or county sheriff. A delegation of authority must 
therefore be resorted to. Democracy must be divided into 
sections narrow enough for the actual assemblage of voters in 
caucus for the selection of deputies to act for them in a 
nominating convention. The minor civil divisions of the 
country, such as towns, wards and boroughs, furnished facili- 
ties to hand for this requisite distribution and integration of 
democratic authority. In the cases where a delegation from 
each of these narrow precincts would make an unwieldy body, 



THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED. 7$ 

or when on account of distance it would be difficult for them 
all to attend, as in the case of a State or a Presidential nomi- 
nation, this delegation of power evidently had need to be still 
farther delegated. Accordingly, in the State of New York, for 
example, the delegates of the popular caucus meet by Assem- 
bly districts to elect delegates to a State convention, which 
convention in turn appoints a delegation to the Presidential 
convention. 

This is a short account merely of the raison d'etre of Politi- 
cal Organization, such as we now see it. To narrate the story 
of its growth, with any detail of time, place and circumstance, 
would be equally tedious to the writer and the reader. Let 
it suffice to say, in this regard, that, though the system was 
first publicly propounded to the people by the famed Albany 
Regency in the State of New York, through its organ the 
Albany Argus, about fifty years ago, and was there first per- 
fected and brought into general use, it showed itself nigh co- 
temporaneously throughout the whole democratic North ; and, 
by virtue of its naturalness and necessity, soon became the 
universal method of establishing candidacy for all elective offi- 
ces of wide jurisdiction. In the aristocratic South it met with 
more delay, but is now fast making up lost time. 

A brief description of the machinery of Political Organiza- 
tion will here be worth while ; for, though we all are the wit- 
nesses and victims of its power, but few of us are familiar with 
its methods, principles and endowments. I myself knew little 
about them till circumstances made me an office-holder, and 
by consequence a politician. That Political Organization was 
a means of party order and efficiency I was well aware, but I 
did not know that it was the master of parties. I was not 
ignorant that self-seeking and fraud had a place in its manage- 
ment, but I did not know that they were its very inspiration. 
Long seeking why our politics so misbehave, I did not find 
out till I was made a member of this its privy council, and 
took a hand in the management of its business. 

Political Organization has three essential parts, viz : the 
Caucus, the Convention and the Committee. 



?6 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

The Caucus 

is the germ of our present political life ; and, like the cell in 
anatomy, bears within itself all the properties of the final 
structure. And, as, in the animal or vegetable frame, that ele- 
mentary collection of vital forces may prove the mother of 
healthy tissue, or may beget vile smut or horrid cancer, so in 
the body politic, while the gathering of the people for consul- 
tation and combined action is the very birth-place of true de- 
mocracy, the party Caucus that stands for it now is but a nest 
of fraud. No vice indeed is lacking to it. By force of activity 
and expertness, a handful of mercenary politicians, destitute 
most often of every claim to respectability, habitually get 
charge of this native cradle of popular government. In the 
interest of these the Caucus is often called too early for popu- 
lar interest, or too late for popular combination, unexpect- 
edly, or at an hour or place inconvenient for general attendance. 
It is always partisan, not general, and, in the majority of cases, 
is packed with the mere adherents of a person or a faction. 
Citizens of character and property notoriously stay away, 
while the thriftless and discredited, fanatics, mercenaries, mi- 
nors and the like, attend in full numbers. 

The Caucus assembled, its organization is the next oppor- 
tunity of the politician. " To have the organization " in poli- 
tics is about equivalent to having possession in law. It is to 
appoint the presiding officer, order procedure, get charge of 
the polls, count the votes and make up the record. When the 
party is at peace within itself, this is left to the chairman of 
the party committee ; but, when there is a war of factions or 
personal ambitions, it is the prize of superior preparation, skill, 
audacity or violence. In either case the mass of voters have 
little or nothing to do with it. I have known half a dozen 
boys to get control of the organization at a Caucus, and make 
an alderman, — on account of his interest in base-ball. 

The Caucus organized, lawlessness is still its only law. 
Repeating, multiple-voting, the stuffing of the ballot-box and 
the sudden turning of it, false counting, intimidation, brutality, 
and other like enormities, constantly thwart or impede a fair 
and free expression of the general will. 



THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED. JJ 

I well remember the first Caucus that I ever went to, now 
some twenty years ago. I went with the innocent hope of help- 
ing to get a better officering of my ward. Arrived, at the hour 
appointed, in a dimly lighted and foul smelling room, I found 
an expert of Political Organization already in possession of the 
gavel, tellers appointed, and a raft of idlers and the retainers 
of politicians, with hardly a worthy citizen among them, crowd- 
ing about the polls, with printed ticket in hand ; and, before an 
unprepared voter could think what to do, the hat was turned, 
the result of the count of ballots declared, the lights blown 
out, and the Caucus ended. Some years later I was desirous of 
being made School Commissioner, with a view to help improve 
public education in quality and abate its cost. The undertak- 
ing looked the more feasible because the Commission had been 
constructed with a special view to escape the influence of par- 
tisan politics. Besides, I was a tax-payer, and an old resident 
of respectability, had quite a drove of children to educate, and 
was known to be a man of some schooling myself. I spoke to 
a number of my neighbors about it, who all agreed that I was 
the very sort of man they wanted for the office. I looked 
upon myself as already as good as nominated : and, the way 
things were situated, nomination was equivalent to election. 
But when I got to the Caucus I found a ring of men, each with 
his clique of personal friends and dependents, already surround- 
ing and engrossing the polls, — one of whom had books and sta- 
tionery to sell to the Board of Education, — another desks, fur- 
naces or other furniture for school-houses, — another fuel, and so 
on, and who had already arranged among themselves which 
of them should be the nominee. The result was, that we got 
a man who had neither children, property, education nor pub- 
lic esteem. In not one of the Caucuses that I have ever at- 
tended has there been a fair and full expression of the popu- 
lar will, but always sinister preparation and sinister methods. 
Even when, as sometimes in rural regions, the Caucus is still 
conducted honestly, it is seldom an unembarrassed consulta- 
tion, where general opinion asserts itself, but a mere arena 
for the rival efforts of aspirants to office. Even the " good 
names " that are frequently put on the ticket of delegates to 



?8 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

" strengthen " it, most often turn out to be merely the repre- 
sentatives of a candidate, a clique, or a special interest. 

This is no unjust, though a very incomplete picture of the 
Caucus ; which now, as lately said a distinguished Baltimore 
judge when some of its iniquities were brought before him, 
" has come to be a part of our political system, constituting 
the almost universal mode by which candidates are brought 
before the public for their suffrage. If it is tainted, our 
political institutions are contaminated at their source." 

The Convention. 

The delegates of the Caucus constitute the Convention, 
either directly or by farther delegation. In the larger states 
this institution generally has three grades : as, for instance, in 
the State of New York, (i) the Assembly District Convention, 
which is composed of the immediate deputies of the Caucus ; 
(2) the Congressional Convention, to which the former body 
sends a delegation ; and (3) the Presidential Convention, where 
assemble the representatives of the latter from all parts of the 
nation. 

Also, the first two grades of this representation have each 
several spheres, — the Caucus sending one delegate, or set of 
delegates, to a city, town or ward Convention, another to a 
county Convention, another to an Assembly Convention, and 
so on ; — each field of civil jurisdiction having its separate as- 
sembly, composed of the Caucus delegates within it. So, in 
the same State, the second grade of the Convention has at 
least three spheres, determined by a like rule, viz : a Congres- 
sional, a judicial and a State. In large cities a fourth is added, 
by transference from the first grade, for the nomination of 
mayor and other high officers of the municipality. In other 
States the arrangement is often somewhat different, both as 
to the gradation and the spheres of the Convention. 

The Convention is now the knot of all high political empire 
in this country. It is here that the chief legislative, judicial 
and executive officers are in effect appointed, and public policy 
and administration marked out. Here, accordingly, politicians 
gather, personally or by deputy ; for to have a seat in the Con- 



THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED. 79 

vention is a certificate of party power that will bring profit 
some day, if not immediately. 

The vices of the Caucus are repeated in the Convention, only 
that they swell by propagation upwards. Sometimes at the 
Caucuses an aspirant or a coterie has elected a clear majority of 
friendly delegates, in which case the business of the Convention 
is but to record the victory : but far more often, especially in 
the grades of Conventions more removed from the people, the 
mastery and profits of politics still remain to be contended for. 
Then a market is opened that beats Wall Street and Chatham 
Row. Every public interest and every personal influence or 
ambition has its value, to buy, or sell, or swap. To cheat 
brings no imputation here, but only to be cheated. High prices 
are not uncommon in this mart. By credible accounts, as 
much as one hundred thousand dollars has been paid to get 
nominated by the Convention of the dominant party for Clerk, 
Register or Sheriff of the County of New York, half that sum 
for Treasurer of Pennsylvania, and, in proportion to their op- 
portunities, for other the like offices all over the country. A 
nomination to Congress from the lean pastures of Vermont or 
Xew Hampshire can sometimes be had for a thousand dollars 
or so ; but in the golden fields of California and Nevada it may 
cost fifty thousand. In the day, which threatens to be near, 
when the Chief Magistracy of the Republic will be set up at 
auction, as was Rome's imperial purple once, we shall see still 
larger transactions. 

Not only are elective offices bought and sold in the Con- 
vention, but there also, in effect, politicians divide among 
themselves diplomacy, cabinet appointments, the supervision 
of banking, insurance, education, public charities and public 
health, and every other place of appointment. Here, too, the 
charge of the public moneys is appropriated, the rich mine of 
the canal staked off, and the settlement of all public jobs sub- 
stantially agreed on. Here gather also they who look to law 
to advance their interests, by tariff, bounty, subsidy, appro- 
priation or altered tax. 

In no grade of the Convention are the opinions, desires or 
interests of the mass of the people taken much into account, — 



8o THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

save as a thing of commercial availability to politicians. In 
every stage it is but a new betrayal of democracy. 

The Committee. 

Political Organization is kept alive from election to election 
by the Party Committee. In the smaller civil divisions, such 
as towns and wards, this agency is established by the Caucus, 
or, rather, by its managers ; in the larger, by the Convention 
in its various grades and spheres. In view of its important 
duties, the Committee is always made up of men of considera- 
tion in the party, and of experience in politics. It fixes the 
time and place for the Caucus and the Convention, and has the 
initiative in organizing them. It keeps the party record and 
holds the party seal. It levies assessments on office-holders 
and contractors, actual or expectant, and disburses the proceeds. 
It belongs to it to manage the press, to encourage or repress 
individual aspirations, to reconcile factions, and, in general, to 
oversee the party campaign. Its endorsement carries great 
weight in the councils of the party, and not seldom determines 
the distribution of political power and profit. Besides, the 
Committee-man is himself in the line of promotion, as entitled 
to reward from Political Organization for services in its behalf. 
There is no surer entry to successful political life than to get 
to be a member of the Committee. 

The Platform 

must also be mentioned as an important instrument in Politi- 
cal Organization. Like a creed in religion, it serves in our 
politics both as a flag and a spell. Investigators in physiology 
tell us that, if you take a hen and give her neck a disconcerting 
twist, and then draw a chalk mark before her eyes, that con- 
spicuous sign becomes the cynosure of her attention, and ren- 
ders the poor thing passive in your hands. Something thus 
it is that no small share of voters, with minds half emotional 
and half mechanical, are dazzled and enslaved by the Platform 
that politicians set before them. To make it the more influen- 
tial, as seeming to the people to be their own voice, each latest 
phrase or fashion of popular impulse or opinion, however 
unjust, superficial or transitory, — such as Government money, 



THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED. 8 1 

Labor reform, Woman suffrage, Grangerdom, and Internal im- 
provements that shall make every farm a village and every vil- 
lage a city, is given a place, — at least upon its edge. Witness 
all the recent platforms of our two great parties. — None the less 
is this contrivance the sheer device and dictate of politicians. 
Thus in 1864, as the reader may remember, the body of the 
Democratic party waited for the Resolutions of the Chicago 
Convention to tell them what they thought in that supreme 
crisis of the Republic ; and fain adopted them, though they 
brought more evils to the party than did the fateful Trojan 
horse to Troy. 

Rings. 

The foregoing is the essential frame-work of Political Organ- 
ization. But it has a thousand accessory constructions — a 
secret service, a power behind the throne, wheels within wheels. 
The lobby at Washington, at every State Capitol and every 
City Hall, is its legitimate progeny, its companion and its help. 
Credit Mobilier, Tammany Hall, the Samana lease, Tweed's 
dynasty, League Island, Land Office and Indian Agency Rings, 
Rings of contractors, Rings to raise the fees of sheriffs, or the 
income of county treasurers or surrogates, and the uncounted 
other foul alliances of self-seeking that are so constantly 
formed to rob the people in every department of the public 
business, are part and parcel of this domination. 

Politicians. 

The Politicians that manage this business are of many sorts. 
One kind gathers the Caucus, another regulates it, and another 
uses it. Some go to the Convention to buy, and some to be 
bought. There is the horse-shed Politician of the country, and 
the corner-grocery Politician of the city ; the Politician of the 
executive ante-room, and the Politician of the legislative lobby ; 
he who bribes an election clerk with money, and he who seduces 
him with promises. There is the cajoler of the people and the 
attorney of corporations, the raving partisan — though never 
too heady for any profitable arrangement — the hired editor, the 
false philanthropist — appropriating what he was entrusted to 
dispense — and, finally, the so-called " scientist " — the thing as 



82 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

bad as the word — who, mounted on the toad-stool of current 
opinion, watches, like a toad, for some savory morsel to come 
within the reach of his glib tongue. 

The perfect type of the American Politician is a mixture 
of the demagogue, the intriguer and the jobber ; flattering the 
people, locking arms with every surrounding influence, and, all 
the while, looking out for himself. The demagogue of history 
pure and simple, is now pretty much relegated to the jejune 
service of labor-unions and grangerdom : "intrigue, ancient ar- 
biter of courts, can never span alone a broad democracy: 
neither can mere jobbery make lasting headway anywhere. 
But so various qualifications rarely meet in one person. There- 
fore politicians generally work in gangs, rounding the ring of 
power. Even members of opposing parties join in a common 
hunt, and amicably divide among themselves the conquered 
quarry. The profits of the Credit Mobilier were traced about 
equally to the pockets of Democratic and Republican politicians. 

The Politician, though sometimes a mere hanger-on of 
respectable society, most often has, in form at least, some regu- 
lar occupation. He is a lazy or thriftless farmer or mechanic, 
an unprosperous tradesman, a lawyer short of clients, or a 
doctor of patients, a preacher of religion for a living, or a failed 
projector. Seldom does he represent the industry, property or 
aspirations of the country. Especially is he a man who can 
say, or unsay, — applauding any cause that is in favor, and 
turning the cold shoulder on it when it needs a champion. 

Politics, by right, should be the most honored of occupa- 
tions, at least in a democracy ; but to call a man a Politician in 
this country now is to put him in discredit. No doubt, honor- 
able men now and then still engage in the business, moved by 
patriotism and laudable ambition ; but they are not numerous. 

Besides, no man can enter the guild of politicians except 
by their consent, and through approaches where fraud is chief 
gate-keeper. With these he must make alliance ; and here must 
he leave his pledge. Entered, all the surroundings favor his 
corruption, and no common man, however pure before, can 
resist them. A decent gratitude compels him to repay with 
favor whoever has aided him. Besides, he can meet unscrupu- 
lous adversaries only with unscrupulous weapons. This con- 



THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED. 83 

tagion, obligation and necessity of our present politics bring 
men to infamy who under a better star would leave to their 
children an untarnished name. 

The Number of Politicians, 

compared with the whole number of voters, is very small. Half 
a dozen practiced hands at the most steer the Caucus, and as 
few the Convention, and these steer the polls. Not one voter 
in a hundred has anything more than a nominal part in mak- 
ing a legislator, governor or judge. 

The Machinery of Political Organization 

has now reached great perfection. It is suited to every situa- 
tion, and is equal to every emergency. So long ago as twenty 
years it sufficed to hold together the mass of the old Whig 
party, under a change of principles nigh as utter as of name. 
At the present time its construction is so complete that, 
like the ready-made houses that Chicago carpenters send out 
to settlers on the prairie, it is carried into every new territory 
and reconstructed State, and set up by Federal officials and 
political adventurers, between sun and sun. Thus has the 
infancy of Nevada, Colorado and the rest been scarred as by 
an inherited pox ; and thus it is, even more than by the en- 
franchisement of the negro, that States in the South, which 
once could boast of governments never excelled in purity, 
intelligence and economy, are now (1875) by-words of reproach 
to democratic rule. 

Allies of Political Organization. 

Three auxiliaries have greatly helped to raise Political 
Organization to its present pitch of power, and now sustain 
it there. 

The first of them is 

The Spoils. 

The public expenditure is the nursing-bottle of our politics. 
Political Organization, as Napoleon said of armies, travels on 
its belly. Its power has matured pari passu with the extension 
of the rule that " to the victors belong the spoils." It is this 
injurious doctrine, the application of which has now spread 



84 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

from the arena of Federal politics, where it originated, to the 
business of every State, county, city and town, that keeps 
politicians to their work. 

But let not its honest author, or Marcy, the great secretary 
of his heir and successor who gave it formula, be hastily blamed. 
In Jackson's period office was becoming a prescription. A 
proud and lethargic bureaucracy, which of all the forms of gov- 
ernment is about the worst, threatened to thwart the will of the 
people, in whose general integrity and competence for political 
business that generous and courageous spirit put great trust. 
Add, that he only precipitated an inevitable concomitant of 
party warfare in democratic society. In a government of castes 
the brotherhood of caste takes care of caste in every change of 
power ; as now we see in England, where the body of public 
occupation is a life estate, whoever is Prime Minister, and how- 
ever the House of Commons may be composed. But in the 
promiscuous competition of our system, neither social relations 
nor neutral position can expect much consideration. Democ- 
racy is a warfare of native powers, and in all of nature's wars 
the conqueror enjoys his conquest. 

The amount of political spoil has become enormous. Said 
Thomas H.Benton in 1828: "The patronage of the federal 
government at the beginning was founded on a revenue of two 
million dollars. It is now operating on twenty-two million, 
and within the life time of many now living must operate on 
fifty million. ,? They who heard this prophecy are not yet all 
dead, but already that patronage operates on six times the 
predicted sum. Still more rapid has been the augment of this 
power in municipalities and other minor spheres of govern- 
ment. In all its relations, government in this country now 
takes in and pays out a good half billion of money yearly. This 
is at the rate of above sixty dollars for every voter. It is true 
that about one-third of the sum is levied to pay the interest 
on public debts, but there is not a dollar of it all but what in 
its collection or disbursement, or in both, leaves some percent- 
age, by way of salary, fees, commissions, advantages or oppor- 
tunities, in the hands of Politicians. The other two-thirds of 
this enormous expenditure are in great part their mere patri- 
mony and nourishment. It certainly is not an exaggerated 



THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED. 8$ 

estimate, that the immediate profits of political rule equal a 
fourth part of the whole public revenues. Thus the average 
house-holder is taxed above fifteen dollars a year — to grease the 
axles and fuel the boiler of the Engine of Political Organization, v 

To these immediate spoils is to be added a great share of 
the enormous value of land grants, steamboat subsidies and 
other bounties, and of innumerable rich franchises and advan- 
tageous charters about ferries, street and other railroads, rail- 
road bridges, gas companies, savings banks and a thousand 
other like interests and opportunities that are now more or less 
preferentially bestowed by legislatures and other political au- 
thorities. Add, also, to these legalized gains, the unlawful 
profits that are pocketed by lobbies and rings, strikers and 
black-mailers, the favored referees of political judges, the venal 
examiners of banks and insurance companies, double-dealing 
detectives, the false guardians of the revenues at the custom 
house, the distillery and the tobacco factory, and many more 
the like. To rightly estimate what these amount to, we must 
remember how enormously in modern times, — by the extension 
of commerce, the increased magnitude of public works, the 
growing diversity of corporate undertakings, and other such 
matters, — the volume of values that are more or less dependent 
on the conscience of government officials has been augmented. 

Nor is this all ; no small part of the general capital and 
occupation of the country hangs on the action of legislatures ; 
which brings great profit to those who are in political control. 
Hundreds of millions of money obey the navigation and the 
excise laws for example, and thousands of millions the tariff. 
Who can count the revenue that politicians in and out of Con- 
gress, foreknowing or preparing the action of government, 
have got by changes in the tax on whiskey and tobacco? Or, 
to take the case of protection to home industry, it is safe to 
say, — without discussing the philosophy of the system, or 
whether the money comes from the pocket of denizens or 
foreigners, — that thousands of fortunes are now in hands where 
they would never be under the policy of free trade. Great 
cities owe their growth and very existence to the tariff. 

Taking all these things together, it is reasonable to estimate 
that Political Organization in effect now handles one-fourth 



86 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

part of the income of the country ; and that of this a quarter, in 
one way and another, sticks to the fingers of Politicians. This 
explains, and I know not what else can, why some fifty thou- 
sand of them in 1876 gathered at Cincinnati, and another fifty 
thousand at St. Louis, to watch or share the nomination of a 
President. This is at once the food and stimulus which sustain 
and push forward Political Organization, and that " cohesive 
power of the plunder " which now alone holds parties together. 
The next great auxiliary of Political Organization is the 

Power of Office. 

The number of men in the pay of the Federal government 
itself is now nearly one hundred thousand ; and States, counties 
and cities altogether must furnish at least as many more office- 
holders. Says the San Francisco Bulletin : " We have in 
round numbers thirteen hundred officers in our local govern- 
ment. If to these are added State and Federal functionaries, 
resident in the city, it will make a total of above two thousand." 
The tax-payers of New York City number less than fifty thou- 
sand ; its corporate employes over thirteen thousand. On the 
whole, hardly less than one voter in twenty is an office-holder, 
and is dependent for his place on Political Organization. 

All these must serve their great creator. Formerly it was 
viewed as unbecoming for a man in public station to meddle 
with the Caucus and the Convention, or to do more at the polls 
than drop a silent vote. But now the Office-holder is the most 
active of all in the political arena. Fear, hope, gratitude and 
pride compel him to unusual exertion. Says the Rome Senti- 
nel : "The whole Republican State Committee (N. Y. 1873) 
is composed of office-holders, with the single exception of a 
teller in a national bank." Allowing what you please for 
partisan exaggeration, the statement is significant. Notori- 
ously, the body of the Presidential Convention at Cincinnati in 
1876, as well as of its attendants, touters and duffers, was made 
up of government employees. Every office-holder must be at 
the service, in purse, time and endeavor, of the Political Or- 
ganization to which he owes his place. Lack of skill, attention 
or integrity in true official duty is constantly overlooked, but 
never dereliction here. 



THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED. 87 

Out of the income of each official, from a member of the 
federal cabinet to the tipstaff of a police court, must be handed 
over a good percentage to carry on the party campaign. In 
the Presidential contest of 1872, as no doubt in the present, 
(1876,) foreign ministers and consuls were systematically 
assessed by the Central Republican Committee at Washington, 
in proportion to their official income, in aid of the party in 
power. So national banks throughout the land were called on 
to hand over, and did hand over, each a required quotum. It 
appeared, in the Credit Mobilier investigation, that a Vice- 
president regularly sent a thousand dollars to the aid of Party 
Organization in Indiana. That the sum turned out to be just 
the equal of a quarterly installment of gratitude or prudence 
from a post office contractor to that influential functionary, 
regularly paid, only adds to the instruction of the incident, as 
furnishing new proof of the wide-ramifying influence of Office. 

The Officeholder must not only pay but work, — he of the 
smaller sort at the Caucus and the polls, and he of the bigger, 
at the Convention and on the stump. There is no distributor of 
letters but what runs his legs off when a Federal contest im- 
pends. Boutwells and Bristows desert the Treasury, Camerons 
and Robesons the Army and Navy, and Chandlers the Interior, 
to furnish orators and wire-pullers to aid the party in power. 
Meanwhile Attorneys-general, like Williams, Ackerman and 
Taft, supply the requisite interpretation of the law. The Presi- 
dent himself, with all his function, comes to the help of the 
power that has made him. From the unlawful franking of 
electioneering documents by departmental functionaries to the 
sale of the intentions of the public treasury in W T all Street, 
and to the still greater crime of making the employment of 
labor on public works dependent on fealty to the powers that 
be, the whole public service is constantly wrested from dem- 
ocratic right to the aid of Office. That this influence is one- 
sided, by no means alters the political situation. Thus the 
public treasury is the paymaster of Political Organization ; and 
thus democracy, as now constructed, but " wings the shaft that 
quivers in its heart." 

The activity and influence of Office increase at every elec- 
tion. From a dependent on the popular poll, the officeholder 



88 ^ THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

is fast becoming its master. This perilous condition of our 
politics has not been unforeseen. Webster and Benton, and 
many of their great Democratic and Whig compatriots warned 
us against it. So long ago as 1826, a committee of the Federal 
Senate, with a view to hinder or escape it, proposed, by con- 
stitutional provision, to limit the President to a single term. 
Far-sighted Andrew Jackson, in each of eight annual messages 
to Congress, recommended the same thing ; and was constantly 
supported in the recommendation by his great antagonist and 
compeer, Henry Clay. De Tocqueville declared this limi- 
tation to be a necessity; and the late Confederate States of 
the South, which, whatever their failure, were not wanting in 
political intelligence, adopted it into their organic law. All 
along, this one Presidential term has been a subject of general 
discussion ; and could the principle of it be so applied as to 
shut out every officeholder from getting a second commis- 
sion, the influence of office in our politics would no doubt be 
greatly diminished. — All this was true in 1876, when these 
paragraphs were written, and is substantially true now, despite 
the well meant but puerile corrections of the present adminis- 
tration. The party that forbids its officeholders to participate 
in the work of Political Organization will quickly extinguish 
itself forever. 

The Press 

is the third ally of Political Organization. This modern crea- 
tion owns all the faculties of ancient fable : a hundred hands, 
uncounted eyes, untiring strength, immortal youth. It adds to 
these the illusion of the ventriloquist : — when it speaks we 
seem to hear the people speak, forgetful that its words issue 
from its own belly. The newspaper is the familiar of every 
fireside, and furnishes more than half our reading. It is there- 
fore the master of reputation in democratic politics, both for 
persons and ideas. To possess its favor is to be called great 
and good ; to lack it, oblivion at the best. This tremendous 
engine, once looked upon as the chief security of freedom, has 
now become in an enormous degree, as demagogue and party 
priest, the instrument of our enslavement. Political Organi- 
zers, observing its power, have taken it into their employ, till 
now the number of public journals in the country that they do 






THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED. 89 

not control by subsidy or promise may almost be counted on 
the fingers. Especially have they seduced this virtuous daugh- 
ter of liberty to be their mistress by bestowing upon her great 
part of the many sinecures and easy berths in the public ser- 
vice. In the State of New York, for example, full half of the 
easy and profitable administration of the internal revenue was 
distributed among the editors and proprietors of newspapers. 
In my own town at the present moment (1876) the adminis- 
tration journal is served by three federal functionaries, who 
get their pay from the public treasury. It is the same with 
its democratic adversary, whenever and so far as its party gets 
power in city, county or State. In the various spheres of 
politics incredible sums are wasted in unnecessary and extrava- 
gant printing for the support and subjugation of the press. 
The pay roll of Tweed & Co. contained the names of eighty- 
nine of the newspapers of the city of New York, — hardly three 
righteous being left. From 1867 to 1871 official printing and 
advertising cost the tax-payers there above a million dollars a 
year, while for all proper purposes a tenth of the sum was ample. 
And yet that ring of plunderers was broken, it is said, because 
it did not pay editors enough to suppress the exposure of 
its transactions. The case is about the same, in Rochester, 
San Francisco, Savannah and every other city. It is no- 
torious that at i\lbany, Harrisburgh, Columbus, Indianapolis 
and other State capitals political patronage has always been a 
mine of wealth to party journals. The new established govern- 
ment of the District of Columbia, Benjamin of our politics, has 
surpassed all its older brethren in this field of debauchment. 

To these official subsidies are to be added the purse of 
the party out of office, and the personal patronage and douceurs 
of political aspirants. With this and with that, it is no slander 
to say that the body of newspaperdom is to-day the ally and 
servitor of Political Organization. 

The Mightiness of Political Organization. 

Thus based on a deep necessity of democratic politics that 
our present method of elections leaves unsupplied, and but- 
tressed round by great supports that strengthen with time, 
Political Organization has now become the master of our career. 



0,0 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

What started as a tender has become the flag ship. Aimed 
at first to collect and empower the will of the people, it 
now has a will of its own. It is no longer the herald, but the 
prince himself. The citizens of New York or New Orleans are 
not so subject to its police and its posse comitatus as they are 
to the Caucus and Convention. It was not the individuals, 
Tweed, Conolly and Hall, that held an imperial city in their 
grip, exchanged embassies with the State capitol, and came 
nigh to compass the making of a president, but the genius of 
Political Organization working through them. It is organiza- 
tion that enables politicians, like bands of robber knights high 
seated on the Rhine, to dominate the vicinage and levy trib- 
ute on all that passes by.- Neither personal nor patriotic am- 
bition can afford to quarrel with it. To neglect the Caucus, 
not to seek a seat in the Convention, or to disregard the calls 
of the Committee, is to be a cypher in politics. Except as 
they wait on this, genius, experience and devotion are of poor 
account -in public affairs. 

Holding all the approaches of power, Political Organization 
is able also to control public policy in a large degree. Not much 
that is important is written in the statute book except by its 
consent, or even at its inspiration. Individual device and the 
impulse of the age alike wait on its favor. The legislature is 
its secretary, the executive its messenger, and the judiciary 
not seldom watches its nod. Meanwhile an innocent and help- 
less people inscribe their banners with its delusive watchwords, 
and marshal themselves this side and that at its command. 

The theory of our system is that the people themselves 
choose their rulers at the polls, but the fact is that the Politi- 
cal Organizers who make nominations at the Caucus and the 
Convention do it. To us is left but one better than Hobson's 
choice : he could have this or none, while we can take the 
candidate of one party or the other, each of them most often 
equally unworthy. 

The web of Political Organization is now spread so wide and 
so fine that not the smallest constituency escapes it. The busi- 
ness of towns is brought by its influence within the range of the 
federal maelstrom, and sucked down often to serious disaster. 

At arms against the rest of the world, these combinations 



THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED. 91 

of Politicians are privately in league with each other, resisting 
in concert " stump " candidates, " citizens " tickets, public 
opinion, and the scrutiny of the law. 

As creeping vines in tropic forests absorb the juices and 
crush the stems of nobler growths, so has Political Organization 
squeezed out the life of democracy in this country till nothing 
is left but crumbling fibre or an empty shell. Like some para- 
sites, too, the thing so imitates the hues of what it feeds on as 
to be taken to belong to it. To illustrate this point a single 
instance will suffice. The federal constitution contains no 
more plausible or approved device than the State Colleges of 
Presidential Electors. Designed in part to crystallize the amor- 
phous, and point the indefinite in public opinion on the larger 
topics of politics, its main intent was to commit the choice of 
the federal executive to bodies selected by the people in each 
State for their high intelligence and integrity ; and so to shape 
the business that illegitimate preparation of every sort should 
be eliminated from this critical node in the career of the 
Republic. But how has that purpose now failed ! The people 
have absolutely nothing to do with the selection of Presiden- 
tial Electors. The polls but serve to register the edicts of Po- 
litical Organization. 

Alarmed democracy, in legislatures and constitutional con- 
ventions, has tried .many various devices, such as minority rep- 
resentation, short terms of office, mixed commissions and the 
like, to impede the sway of this encroaching power, but all in 
vain. Reform must take a deeper hold. 

Political Organization necessarily Self-seeking. 

The Caucus and Convention, as has been already pointed 
out, were of virtuous parentage, and their early history accord- 
ingly presents nothing discreditable. It is the unanimous tes- 
timony of men who were engaged in politics thirty or forty 
years ago, that these bodies were then honestly constituted, 
organized and conducted, and that the nominations that they 
made were a substantial expression of the general will. But 
now, from a spontaneous impulse and arrangement of democ- 
racy, Political Organization has become little more than a Con- 
spiracy of Self-seekers. 



92 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

This disastrous and foreboding change is not difficult to 
account for. As time went on it was found that the gathering 
of the Caucus and Convention, and the making party organiza- 
tion continuous from year to year, through the Committee, and 
effective at the polls, necessarily involved the expenditure of 
much money, time and toil. What with the hire of a polling 
place for the Caucus, a hall for the Convention and headquar- 
ter-rooms for the Committee ; the cost of the printing and dis- 
tribution of tickets, circulars, and other advertising ; of watch- 
men and attorneys to guard and further party interests at 
the polls ; of messengers and livery to bring laggards along, 
and a thousand other necessities, the mere money expendi- 
tures of the conductors of a political campaign in any large 
constituency are of great magnitude. In a presidential contest 
they count up among the millions. The personal attention, 
industry and skill involved are of corresponding proportions. 

Now, it is not in average human nature to toil or spend in 
any cause without the reasonable prospect of a quid pro 
quo. But no such inducement to take a busy and expensive 
part in the conduct of politics reaches the average citizen, 
unless in some rare emergency. Who will spend fifty dollars 
to save ten ? The principal interest that the voter ordinarily 
feels, or has, in the public business, is to save something in 
taxes ; but to try to make that saving by going into politics 
would be, he knows, to save at the spigot and waste at the 
bung-hole. It would necessarily cost him ten times his stake, 
with the chances ten to one that he would be cast after all. 
Neither because he thinks that the education of his children 
in the public schools is badly managed, or that the alderman, 
or Congressman that represents him is incapable, or that any 
other such evil is going on, will he wish, or can he afford, to incur 
the expense, fatigue and harassment of traversing his county, 
ward or district, to awaken, instruct and incite public opinion, 
and to gather the Caucus and arrange the Convention for the 
selection of better nominees. The busy man cannot allow 
the time, the lazy man the industry, the poor man the money, 
nor the rich man the trouble; nor will the wise man, of which- 
soever of these kinds, be quick to undertake the difficult and 
thankless task. In the same regard, the honest man cannot 



THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED. 93 

be expected to take as much pains to guard the public cash 
box as the burglar will to break into it, nor folks of sense to 
be as bent on keeping an ass out of the legislature as that 
persevering creature often is to get there. 

In a word, it is only the man who looks to being made 
sheriff, treasurer, congressman or collector, either now or by 
and by, to furnishing public supplies from his store, or getting 
public deposits for his bank, to having his son made a police- 
man, a cadet or a deputy, or to some other of the innumera- 
ble advantages that attend political control, who has sufficient 
inducement to undergo the toil and meet the costs of Political 
Organization. 

Here the greediness and venality of so many of our public 
men find, not only explanation, but some excuse. The ballot 
box in large constituencies utterly fails to bestow authority on 
the people, and leaves it to the laborious and costly rivalry of 
Politicians. Surely it is not strange that they who have toiled 
and spent should deem themselves entitled to profit and enjoy. 
Thus the unseemly " salary grab " was in fact entirely congru- 
ous with the situation. 

Add, that what is nobody's business is anybody's, and 
we have a full explanation of how Political Organization is now 
totally in the hands of Self-seekers. 

The Impotence of the People at Large 

corresponds with the might of Political Organization. Not 
more subdued to a greedy priesthood was the church of Eng- 
land in Wyckliff's time than is democracy now in this republic 
to combinations of designing Politicians. There is almost an 
absolute disconnection between the public will and public 
function. We are not the willing architects of our own mis- 
fortunes. That cabinets are unskilled, city councils corrupt 
and legislatures ignorant, is no impeachment of democracy, for 
the people have nothing to do with selecting them. Surely it 
is not by popular contrivance or design that the charge of the 
commonwealth has now become the wage of rival gangs of 
unscrupulous Politicians. 

All the struggles that from time to time the people make 
to escape from this thraldom are but like the vain, pitiful 



94 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

wriggling of worms beneath a giant's tread ; and this for the 
following reasons : 

(i.) No campaign can be carried on under our present sys- 
tem of politics in any large constituency, as already explained, 
without the expenditure of much time, money and endeavor. 
The mere getting up of a ticket of candidates, putting it before 
the people, explaining its intent, defending it against wrong 
assault, and promoting it at the polls, is a costly and arduous 
job. In doing such work the collections of politicians are 
stimulated and aided by the plenitude of the public purse, in 
esse or in posse, by the vigor of office and contract seeking, and 
by all the other sinister ambitions that look to politics for help ; 
while scattered patriotism has nothing to depend on but con- 
fused general purpose, hesitating efforts, and scanty and uncer- 
tain material aid. 

(2.) The general will can be of but little avail against the 
existing powers of politics until it shall possess itself of the 
slow grown and wide reaching faculties which they enjoy. Im- 
pulse can never compete with system in the long run, individ- 
uality with co-operation, nor youth with inveteracy. Not till 
the loose purposes and undertakings of the people are somehow 
grown together, as those of politicians now are, can they act for 
themselves. If everybody should go to the Caucus, as we are 
so loudly exhorted to do, the action of that body, as it is now 
shaped, would still obey the concert of self-seeking politicians. 

(3.) They who from patriotic motives may undertake to 
break our bondage to Party Organizers, must constantly lack 
the wide personal acquaintance, the intimacy with popular 
opinions and prejudices, and the practice of management, with 
its resulting skill, that they acquire who make politics their 
business. This' is why a few years ago an assembly of the best 
citizens of Chicago, spurred to great effort by the unexampled 
calamity of her conflagration, found themselves utterly incapa- 
ble of getting up a " citizens " ticket for municipal officers to 
help meet the emergency, that would have any chance of suc- 
cess, till they called to their aid the skill of leading politicians 
in the two parties, and made nominations in accordance with 
their suggestions. 

(4.) Finally, the people can seldom be sure that a so-called 



THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED. 95 

" tax-payer's," " no-party," or " citizens' " ticket is any better 
than the rest. Not all of them who cry " Reform ! Reform !" 
are really Reformers, — as the famous " Committee of Seventy " 
had reason to know when they found their own ranks infested 
with the very sort of vermin of which they were trying to rid 
the administration of the city. It is notorious that more often 
than otherwise such undertakings are engineered by office- 
seekers, turn-coats and traders in politics. 

Abstention of the People from Politics. 

Their impotence thus becoming apparent, the great body of 
citizens, especially of the better sort, now seldom attend Cau- 
cuses, leaving them to the charge of rival office-seekers and their 
friends, and office holders, and dependents. Says the Chicago 
Tribune: " At the primary meetings this year (1874) to select 
delegates to nominate candidates for Congress, county officers 
and members of the State legislature, not more than six thou- 
sand votes were polled " — this in a city of at least sixty thou- 
sand lawful voters — " and of these one-half were confessedly 
repeaters and fraudulent, many notoriously doing service for 
both parties." " There is a force in this city of about two 
thousand men," says the same paper, " who are professional 
attendants at primaries, and who are hired regularly every year 
to nominate certain candidates." This is but a fair sample of 
what obtains in every other city. 

The polls too are getting to be deserted, except on great 
party occasions where Political Organization presides. Not 
more than one in ten of the voters of Oswego takes part in the 
election of school commissioners. Amendments of the charter 
of that city that were deemed by the State legislature of 
importance enough to be submitted to the vote of the people 
at a special poll got even less attention, — and that almost alone 
from those who had a special interest in the matter and from 
their personal friends. It is a good deal for the same rea- 
son that important changes in State constitutions often call 
out, notoriously, but a meagre vote. Tired out by Politicians, 
we sometimes seem to be approaching the despairing apathy of 
the neighboring Mexican republic, where, often, it is said, in a 
city of twenty thousand population not a hundred come to 



g6 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

the polls ; or the indifference of new-enfranchised and untaught 
Italy, where not a twentieth part of the lawful voters seem to 
care what is going on. It sometimes looks as though popular 
sentiment in the matter of politics were becoming perished and 
insensible, like a palsied member. We seem hardly to try to 
get release from our present bondage. We constantly throw 
up our hats for candidates whose unfitness for public duty is 
as clear to unblunted sight as the noon day sun. It is aston- 
ishing what poor statesmanship and questionable virtue seem 
to please us. We are satisfied with half a man. If a high 
officer of finance appear to be honest, no matter if he be a fool ; 
or if a congressman be smart, no matter if he be also a knave. 
Under these circumstances it is not strange that 

The Best Class of Men are Fast Disappearing from Public 

Life. 

There is no municipal council or State legislature that is 
composed of the most able and respected citizens. Scant, 
surely, is now the supply of statesmen at either end of Penn- 
sylvania Avenue. A foggy nebula has supplanted those bright 
stars which at the beginning of this generation sprinkled thick 
the political sky, and rained influence on all the nation. Hardly 
is there now a man in public life who, by eloquence, knowledge, 
expertness or force, has brought to the help or decoration of 
our politics aught that will save him from quick oblivion when 
his term of office shall be spent, or some momentary party con- 
troversy go by, or to whom public opinion can look for guid- 
ance, or the public welfare for strong advancement. In the 
scales of the Political Organizer that now determine who shall 
fill every public place, nothing but popular availability, the 
claims of party service, and the favor of official power has much 
weight. Poised against these, character, intelligence and integ- 
rity kick high the beam. For nigh fifty years under his rule 
we have constantly seen solid public opinion and the aspira- 
tions of native greatness alike have less and less to do with the 
occupancy of high station and the conduct of high duties. 
Patriotism has been crowded away by self-seeking, honor by 
sordidness, and statesmanship by intrigue and activity. Posi- 
tions of the highest trust and distinction, such as should crown 



THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED. 97 

a lifetime of noble endeavor, have become the prize of cunning 
and impudence. Fitness is now no qualification for public 
place, but rather a disqualification. " I was thought of," says 
Figaro, " for a government appointment ; but, unfortunately, I 
was fit for it ; an arithmetician was wanted, a dancer got it." 
The story of political preferment in this country at the present 
time could hardly be better told. 

The means and methods by which almost alone public sta- 
tion can now be attained to are repulsive to high minded men. 
Self-respect hesitates to descend to the companionship of the 
Caucus and the Convention ; integrity scorns their devious 
courses, and independence refuses their slavish environment. 
Nor is political elevation any longer august, or capable of giv- 
ing much satisfaction to a worthy ambition. If a man of 
qualifications arrive at a seat in some public body, he finds him- 
self out of place in the midst of surrounding stolidity, sloth and 
fraudulence. His capacity is unappreciated and his ideas of 
duty laughed at. The jealousy of meaner minds, hoodwinked 
partisanship, the marauders and free-booters of politics, and 
the enterprise of a venal or sensational press, constantly 
assault him ; and, though he may not quail before their 
attacks, he will hardly seek intercourse or conflict with 
them again. 

Thus it is that while in our early history the most worthy 
and distinguished citizens were proud to take a seat in the 
common council or the State legislature, they are now near 
all desirous to escape it. The fittest men seldom want to be 
either mayor or governor. Even cabinet offices in the federal 
government are often refused by the people best qualified to 
fill them. And yet no other occupation is so worthy of the 
desire or employ of exalted natures, or naturally so attractive 
to them, as the management and instruction of civil society. 
But not till a better class of opportunities and attractions than 
what they now have is furnished to them will they undertake 
the business. 

Whatever talent arrives at public station is principally de- 
voted, out of the strong demands of both gratitude and pru- 
dence, to the support of Political Organization. The creation 
of this power, the public man is also its creature- His first 



98 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

allegiance he feels to be due to the men that nominated him, 
his second to the party that supported him, and his last to the 
general interest or his conscience ; and he governs his conduct 
accordingly. To repay to Politicians what he owes them, to 
take care of himself by taking care of his friends, to defend the 
administration or to discredit it, according to his party side, and 
to watch the gales of popular opinion, however ephemeral or 
unhealthy, are now the chief endeavor and occupation of public 
men, to near the utter neglect of painstaking study of the 
common welfare. 

Out of this it comes that we so constantly have 

Little Men in Big Places. 

A pest of pettiness, banded together in Political Organiza- 
tion have now nigh driven out all high qualities from public 
life — as in South Africa, it is said, swarms of noisome insects 
render wide regions uninhabitable by man. DeTocqueville 
told us that our system " tends to level down." Said Carlyle 
lately to an American visitor : " Yours is the only country in 
the world that is not ruled by its best citizens." Says one who 
has been called the Boanerges of newspaper reporters and 
the Tacitus of our cotemporary annals : " The public business 
at Washington is ruled by the meanest and littlest of men." 
Not far out of the way are these observations. When you 
consider the importance and difficulty of their duties, I know 
nothing more incongruous than the narrow calibre, the scanty 
accomplishments and the groveling aims of the great majority 
of our public functionaries. It would be difficult to find a 
community of forty thousand people anywhere in the nation 
that could not supply a better cabinet to advise the President 
about the concerns of over forty millions of us than Washing- 
ton has seen collected in the last dozen years. 

The very style of the great majority of public documents, 
let alone their logic, is enough to condemn their authors, as it 
were out of their own mouths ; for there is great truth in the 
saying that " the style is the man." The wandering pen 
evinces the chaotic mind. 



THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED 99 

Young Men our Rulers. 

Another evil result of the present state of politics is the 
commitment of the public business largely to youngsters. 
Grey heads are rare in our councils, and the terms " alderman " 
and " senator" have lost their native significance. The aver- 
age age of the members of. the State legislature from New York 
city in 1874, was reported to be less than thirty-four years. 
Even upon the judicial bench we constantly see men who have 
to learn their business as they go along, like a shifty peda- 
gogue. Great change is there in this respect since Henry 
Clay, fifty years ago, was seriously objected to as a candidate 
for the presidency, and perhaps defeated, because he was but 
forty-seven years old, — no so young a man by a whole lustrum 
of the ripening years of life having ever been raised to that 
august station. This change has occurred partly because sage 
experience abstains with disgust from our present politics, 
partly because slow-growing character has no longer much 
foothold in that tumultuous arena, but chiefly because youth 
especially abounds in the stir and impudence that are essen- 
tial to success under the rule of Political Organization. Thus 
has the staid wisdom of- age been supplanted by the giddiness 
of youth. But still the change, it must be allowed, is not 
much inconsistent, in the present conduct of politics, with the 
ancient maxim : " old men for counsel and young men for 
war," for our democracy is now far more a warfare than a 
council. 

This promotion of juvenility flatters Young America and 
aids that changeableness in policy which narrow vision takes 
for progress ; but it is none the less of evil omen, as at war 
alike with the general phenomena of nature, the lessons of 
history and the conclusions of reason. Surely a man knows 
more at fifty or sixty years old than at thirty. If you had 
known twenty years ago what you have learned since, you 
might be worth a million. Rapid as may be the movement 
of the age, it does not outstrip the capacity of the individual 
mind to keep up with it. The occasional monstrosities of 
youthful genius in war, eloquence or poetry, like Charles the 
Twelfth, Patrick Henry, or Byron, are no argument against my 



100 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

proposition. Where history shows one Pitt prime minister of 
a wise nation at twenty-five, it records a score of Palmerstons 
whose great abilities lacked ripeness until the grand climac- 
teric of life. The period of three score years and ten is often 
looked on as a sign of imbecility, but there are many times 
more imbeciles at thirty years of age : for native vigor is long- 
lived. Add to this argument that, however great the qualifi- 
cations of a man may be, it is impossible that they should 
become generally known to a large community till after he had 
been many years on the public stage. 

The report of a recent committee of Congress (1873?) on 
Civil Service Reform strikingly sets forth a number of the 
evils of our politics, and deserves to be quoted here ; although 
its authors failed to reach the bottom of the difficulty, attrib- 
uting nigh all that we suffer to rotation in office, which is in 
fact but one of the fruits of the Organization of Politicians. 

They say : " The whole machinery of government is pulled 
to pieces every four years. Political caucuses, primary meet- 
ings and conventions are controlled by the promise and expec- 
tation of patronage. Political candidates for the lowest and 
highest positions are directly or indirectly pledged. The 
pledge is the price of the nomination, and when the election is 
determined pledges must be redeemed. The business of the 
Nation, the legislation of Congress, the duties of the depart- 
ments, are all subordinated to the distribution of what is called 
the ' spoils.' No one escapes. President, Secretaries, Repre- 
sentatives, are pertinaciously dogged and besought on the one 
hand to appoint, on the other to retain, subordinates. The 
great officers of the Government are constrained to become 
mere office-brokers. Meantime they have their hopes, ambi- 
tions and designs. They may strive to make their patronage 
secure their private aims. The spectacle is as familiar as it is 
painful and humiliating. We accuse no individual. We 
appeal only to universal and deplorable experience. 

" The influence of this system upon those who hold office 
may be inferred. Officers appointed chiefly as a reward for 
personal and party service and not upon proof of fitness, who 
know that there is no certain promotion for merit, and that 
they hold their places only until others with more influential 



THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED. IOI 

friends can thrust them out, can have neither pride nor hope 
in the fulfilment of their duties. * * Taught by the system 
to regard the office as a prize, and warned by the same system 
that their tenure is neither character nor fitness, they are sorely 
tempted to make the most of it in the shortest time, both to 
repay the trouble and expense of procuring it, and to provide 
against an early removal. Meanwhile, as a part of the vast 
scheme of patronage, an officer who is appointed solely in ref- 
erence to political pressure is judged not by the manner in 
which he does his duty, but by the zeal with which he serves 
the influence that secured his place. * * * 

" When public offices are regarded only as rewards for 
political service, they will be constantly multiplied to supply 
more places. There will be incessant temporary employments, 
as they are called, and consequent deficiency bills, and supple- 
mentary appropriation bills. Meanwhile, the influence which 
has obtained the office, not for the public service, but as a 
private reward, will be slow to see the inefficiency or actual 
dishonesty in the conduct of the incumbent. * * * 

" But when the application is urged upon the Executive 
Department by a member of the Legislative branch of the 
Government, the mischief becomes intolerable. It is often by 
the power of patronage that a Representative is chiefly known 
to what are called the active politicians among his constitu- 
ents. He is held to be their agent and broker of offices. 
They have done his work and he must do theirs, and his 
position often depends upon his fulfilment of pledges. When, 
therefore, he applies to the appointing power, there is a kind of 
urgency which it is hard to resist. It is not a favor only that 
he asks, — it is the means of fulfilling a bargain. The place is 
demanded in the name of the party. Yet, granting the favor 
is not necessarily a benefit to the party ; it is often a profit to 
one man only and his followers." 

Otlur evil influences of Political Organization. 

The bad effects of the present false construction of democ- 
racy are by no means limited to the public business, but ex- 
tend to every feature of our condition. The Caucus and 
Convention now hold the middle ground where government 



102 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

meets the people, and authority its subjects. They form a 
connecting link, a door of passage to and fro, an intermediate 
broker, a re-agent of double determination, a mordant that 
fixes the color of democracy as well on the under as on the 
upper side. If their work be evil, society can but suffer in 
every nerve. 

It is chiefly by the influence of Politicians, who in effect 
form the constituency of Political Organization, that party 
spirit \ — chief bane of free government from time immemorial, 
— is kept alive among the people, after all reason for it has 
ceased. They will not let by-gones be by-gones. They rub 
our ears and set us on. At every election they blow hot the 
dying embers of religious strife, and stir the competition of 
localities, the prejudices of race, and every other element of civil 
discord. It is to their pretended sympathy with the side of the 
most numerous voters that has been chiefly due the conflict be- 
tween labor and capital that so constantly scars our industry 
and brings women and children to want. A satisfactory settle- 
ment of the important social question about the sale of intoxi- 
cating drinks has little other hindrance than the interested 
interference of Politicians. They pat the grey mare, seduc- 
tively. They get between the impulse and the goal of charity, 
and prostitute it on the way. Education, enterprise, agricul- 
ture, commerce and every mechanic and aesthetic art are 
constantly brought more or less to harm by their operations. 
There is, in short, no concern or affection of the people that 
Politicians do not now make use of, to its own great detriment, 
to advance their ambition and gratify their greed. 

A striking example of the wide disastrous influences of our 
politics has been lately visible to the instructed eye in the 
calamity that in the autumn of 1873 overtook alike the capital 
and the labor of the country, the one losing its accumulations 
arid the other its employment. That whole trouble had its 
immediate cause in the collapse of railroad enterprise ; and that 
collapsed because it had been blown up to unnatural propor- 
tions by Federal subsidies, State guarantees, the permission to 
the people to vote themselves a railroad, and other follies, 
crudities and iniquities of legislation on the subject — of all 
of which Organizations of Politicians by universal consent have 



THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED. 103 

been the prime promoters. At the beginning of that year we 
were building at the rate of about fifteen thousand miles of 
railroad per annum ; and Wall Street was flourishing along 
twice as many more completed miles that hardly earned half 
their expenses. On this depended for employment, directly 
and indirectly, above a million pairs of hands, and for support 
at least three times as many more, and, for rent, no end of 
capital. All at once, swelled beyond the strain that the material 
could endure, the balloon suffered a rent and dragged on the 
ground, throwing out the multitude of capitalists and labor- 
ers that had occupied its basket, bringing disaster upon all 
surrounding and dependent industries, and sending a wave of 
poverty over the whole country. Any other account of that 
crisis than this, whoever offers it, is shallow at the best. 

The influence of politics is as pervading as the universal 
air. It taints or sweetens, revives or mortifies, all that it 
breathes upon. Whatever is false in government spreads 
disaster among all the concerns of society, working loss, wrong, 
ill example and discouragement, and hindering spontaneous 
adjustment and healthy evolution. 

The present debauchment of public life has begun to hurt 
the morals of the people themselves. Nor could it be other- 
wise. Great is the power of example. We reform others, it 
has been well said, when we ourselves walk uprightly. Gov- 
ernment is a city set on a hill. It is the cynosure of all the 
country round. Its rays of influence reach to the utmost 
circumference of society, and penetrate its narrowest corners. 
In democracies, as in kingdoms, the practices of rulers are a 
fireside theme, and a justification. There is a fashion in morals 
and opinions, as well as in dress, that takes its cue from head- 
quarters : and, accordingly, in this country the tone of virtue 
in Capitols and City Halls threatens to become its tone in 
private life. Propriety and dignity are abashed when inde- 
cency and vulgarity sit in high places. When self-seeking is 
rewarded in public life, when honesty proves not to be the path 
of policy, and when honor loses preferment, a great incitement 
to virtue is taken away, and a stimulus to unworthy ambition 
added. When presidents, vice presidents, governors, mayors, 
the speakers of great legislatures, and other high public func- 



104 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

tionaries, are constantly convicted of crime, indirection or dis- 
ingenuousness, where shall the people be taught virtue and 
good faith ? If the custom prevails to make as much as 
possible, per fas aut ne fas, out of the public, why not make it 
out of our neighbors? When knavery in the Caucus and the 
Convention has such good reward, why not try it in private 
business? I know not how the spirit of evil can find more 
encouragement than when election frauds are rewarded, as 
they are now, by political success ; when the endeavors of 
Christian charity, in hospital and poor-house, are turned to 
the profit of Politicians, or even made arenas of inhumanity 
and sensualism ; or when, so often, in our police, the officers 
of the law share in the gains of them who violate the law. 

There is no avocation that is not stained by the touch of 
Political Organization. The Bar of New York City was lately 
forced to try to gather its respectability to one side in order to 
escape the inculpation of general brotherhood in political 
crime. Another learned profession has been taught to seek 
such important and honorable public places as that of health 
officer, commissioner of lunacy, coroner and the like, not by 
devotion to science or humanity, but by party activity and the 
cultivation of political influence. Even the pulpit turns from 
the chastisement of the pride that sits before it, canopied with 
pagan magnificence, to comment on politics, and to flatter its 
constituency by the attribution of especial patriotism. The 
pen is debauched when it so often finds support in helping Or- 
ganizations of unworthy Politicians. So, every other form of 
science or skill gets a set back when the public honors and em- 
ployment that belong to merit are bestowed on political pets, 
and when humbugs in education, agriculture and the fine arts 
have the approval and aid of capitols. Even our army and 
navy, of old the peculiar home of strong integrity, have begun 
to feel the corrupt and enervating influence of our false poli- 
tics. Already are their rosters thick-set with sycophants and 
sinecurists. Preferment goes no longer by merit or gradation, 
but by political favor. Poor school of honor surely is there 
now at navy yards, arsenals, Indian agencies, or any other of 
the stations where official example is set to the defenders of 
the country. In short, there is no form of opinion or occupa- 



THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED. 105 

tion where the dishonesty of our politics has not grafted its 
evil scions, and brings not forth already its bitter fruit. 

Wrongs to the Weak and Young. 

Two phenomena of peculiar painfulness and peril that mark 
our present career are worthy of special mention here in justi- 
fication of my complaint. 

Pitiful for humanity to witness, and surely most dangerous 
to the Republic, is the way that the ignorant, the foolish and 
the poor, who forever constitute so large a share of mankind, 
and who in great affairs are the proper wards and pupils of 
superior natures, are misled, defrauded and corrupted at the 
Caucus and the polls by Politicians, and taught to believe that 
there is no such virtue as public honesty. 

But of still worse omen are the lessons that are sown by 
the same hand in the quick minds of youth. The present is 
the nursery of the future. The customs of the day are the 
school of the rising generation, and its successful men their 
examples. All the fashions of our politics tend strongly to 
their debauchment. Already we see no end of young men 
seduced from the paths of steady industry and decent ambi- 
tion into an idle and unworthy waiting on the favor of parties 
and Politicians. 

If in these things the commonwealth incur no danger, then 
surely it need never be alarmed ; and if the spirit of civiliza- 
tion, progress, humanity, or whatever other high expectation 
or sentiment is extant, have here no accusation to make, then 
let them be forever silent. 

Falsi a ff mustering his Recruits. 

Shakespeare pictured the universal. The Politician be- 
longs to no age or country, but always and everywhere stands 
ready to seize upon the rule that society thus far has left open 
to his greedy approach. Before me hangs an engraving of a 
painting by Schroedter of " Falstaff mustering his recruits," 
(King Henry IV, part 2d, act 3d, scene 2d,) which a few years 
ago was so widely circulated by the Cosmopolitan Art Associ- 
ation as to be known to a good many of my readers, and which 
wonderfully illustrates the situation and spirit of politics at 



106 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

the present time. In the face and attitude of Falstaff himself 
are depicted the unscrupulousness, arrogance, cunning and 
shameless greed that generally belong to the Knights of Politi- 
cal Organization in this country now. Before him attend the 
helpless and frightened people, mixed with his esquires, making 
trade of their prestige and opportunities. At his right hand 
appears the obsequious visage of the inferior office-holder, and 
at his left — worst feature of all — the page and r pupil of our 
politics, idly toying at first glance, but, on second, fully watch- 
ful of the situation,— -as though looking out for an inspectorship 
of the customs or of elections, or the clerkship of some legisla- 
tive committee. 

Prospective Growth of the Rule of Political Organization. 

This injurious mastery of bands of self-seekers over the 
commonwealth is not a momentary cloud darkening the politi- 
cal sky, nor any chance morbidity that the healing virtue of 
nature may be expected to purge away in due time ; neither is 
it some imported evil germ, like communism, which the supe- 
rior intelligence of the American people may safely be trusted 
to suppress: it is rooted in our present political life deeper 
than scrofula in the human body. Some transient weakening 
and local break-down it may suffer, names and platforms will 
change from time to time, and new hands in their generation 
gather the reins of power, but its general sway in spirit and in 
force can but steadily augment. Like the young behemoth 
that it is, whatever surface bruises it may suffer, its deeper 
thews will still expand, its joints gather oil, and its brawn 
resistance. After all the innumerable recent investigations 
and impeachments by congress and State legislatures, the 
corrections of courts and the anxious endeavors of the peo- 
ple, it is difficult to see where political vice is any more than 
scotched at the best. Surely, if there be anything that 
promises to strengthen in the future, it is the Organization of 
self-seeking Politicians under our present system of pretended 
democracy. What adversary shall challenge it? or for whom 
shall it step aside ? We have to help resist it no artificial in- 
fluence or ancient authority, such as a standing army, a state 
religion, the compact corporation of land owners that primo- 



THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED. IO7 

geniture keeps up, or the inherited station of monarch or oli- 
garch. Will the people come to their own rescue, or can they? 
It might seem to promise something in this latter behalf when 
a thousand voting tax-payers assemble, as they did at Fort 
Wayne, Ind., on the 10th of August, 1873, to J om m protest 
against existing Rings of Politicians, and the unlawful and griev- 
ous burdens that they had imposed upon the people : but what 
can such conglomerations of democracy do beyond protesting ? 
Absolutely nothing. All such popular up-risings and vocifera- 
tions are as weak against the strong-seated power of Political 
Organization as the tumultuous waves that bark at the rock of 
Gibraltar. The very security of this potentate is the Sahara 
of democratic power in the midst of which it stands, — as often 
times surrounding barrenness and desolation guarded the 
ancient cities of the East. Not till the situation where it has 
its origin is changed, will Political Organization cease to spread 
itself. 

The Prospect of our Politics not bright. 

The future can be best argued from the past, our destiny 
from our tendency. If for half a century our system of politi- 
cal construction has behaved worse and worse, what will it be 
doing a half a century hence? As no citizen of New York 
forty years ago would have dreamed of the profligacy, incom- 
petency and neglectfulness by which its late legislatures have 
been characterized, so the near future may have in store for us 
such public wrongs and follies as will make this base period 
appear to our children as pure and golden as do to us the days 
of Clinton and Tompkins, or of Silas Wright, Michael Hoffman, 
Abijah Mann, and Azariah C. Flagg. When speculating bank- 
ers rule the treasury and make merchandise of the national 
honor, when law-makers, greedy or aghast, run to and fro 
between railroad corporations and granges for money or in- 
struction, when a single city is robbed by a Ring of Politicians 
of forty-five millions of money in three years, and when 
election frauds have repeatedly set States and the nation itself 
on the edge of civil war, what is there that we may not fear? 
If Political Organization do such things in the green, what will 
it not do in ripened hardihood? The way it looks, the day 
is not far distant when the judge will be as dependent for his 



108 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

situation on the help of Politicians as is now the janitor of his 
court room, and when his solemn office will be as regularly- 
traded for as is now a shrievalty or a county clerkship. 

Youthful ingenuousness, bookish theory and patriotic confi 
dence expect to see a change for the better, if not in this 
campaign at least in the next, and every now and then gather 
courage from the sight of some narrow and momentary eddy 
which they take for a settled alteration in the main stream. 
But no such comfort does old experience or deep philosophy 
discover. At the rate we are going down it will not take us 
long to reach the very nadir of political profligacy and folly. 
Said Kossuth, who was as clear and capable an observer of pub- 
lic affairs as this century has produced, after making us a visit : 
" If you do not get rid of ) our Politicians your country will be 
lost within fifty years. " Only ten years after that prediction 
these Politicians plunged us into an internecine war, from which 
the nation with difficulty escaped alive. A quarter of a century 
still remains for the fulfilment of his prophecy ; and who shall 
say that it will not be fulfilled ? 

But, notwithstanding this severe incrimination of them, I 
not only admit, but most earnestly claim, — and let not this 
claim be forgotten, — that, under our present system of elections, 
these 

Political Organizations are a Necessity and a Benefit. 

Were this improvisation of democratic power suddenly to give 
out, our condition would be as much worse than it is now as 
anarchy is worse than despotism. Naught but its interference 
saves the commonwealth in large constituencies from constant 
casualty and utter chaos. Without the help of "working" 
Politicians to gather and organize popular opinion and set up 
candidates, our votes for governor, mayor, member of con- 
gress, county officers and the like, would inevitably be scattered 
all about, and not even a decent plurality of voices, much less 
a majority, would ever chime. On the contrary, the apostle of 
some transient, narrow and undeserving notion, like know-noth- 
ingism, labor reform or woman's rights, which popular enthu- 
siasm or alarm had suddenly lifted up ; the mere demagogue 
of the press, the pulpit or the stump ; or the attorney of some 



THE TRUE ROOT OF OUR DIFFICULTIES EXPOSED. IO9 

strong moneyed corporation, would attain to power, while the 
mass of public opinion and interest, lacking cohesion, impulse 
and even self-consciousness, would remain unrepresented and 
unprotected. 

In short, we are doing the best that is possible under our 
present system of elections. In the nature of the case, the 
virtual selection of public functionaries in constituencies too 
large for all the voters to assemble must devolve on a small 
delegated fraction of the mass of the people. Thus it was 
that in Chicago, after its frightful fire, and in New York, a 
year or two before, when something nigh as terrible came to 
light in the exposure of a gang of municipal thieves, general 
anxiety and opinion found no way to exert themselves, until to 
a committee constituting less than one-thousandth part of 
the voting population the whole selection of candidates was 
virtually given. How necessary is the present machinery of 
Political Organization to democratic effort may also be seen in 
the fact that every popular movement, whether for temperance, 
against railroads, or in any other direction, constantly employs 
its very methods and instruments, — Caucus, Convention, Com- 
mittee, Platform and all. 



CHAPTER V. 

a new system of elections, 
(nova instauratio reipublicle.) 

HAVING thus indicated the unsatisfactoriness of our pre- 
sent political state, having shown the utter insufficiency 
of the chief suggestions that have been heretofore made toward 
either its explanation or its cure, and having pretended to 
trace it to its original source, it remains for me to offer a logi- 
cal, practicable and effective remedy, without doing which 
complaint and criticism are but a cheap occupation. 

If I have been right in laying the trouble to our election 
system, its remedy must obviously be sought for in an amend- 
ment of that system. Nor should the search seem hopeless, 
since difficulties of artificial origin ought not be beyond the 
reach of art to overcome. Whatever evils law has caused, 
surely law can cure. 

Let the substance of my argument be briefly stated afresh : 
Noticing that, almost universally, the present prevailing method 
of establishing public authority by direct popular vote works 
well in small constituencies and ill in large, I attribute its fail- 
ure in the latter class of cases to three circumstances ; viz : 
(i) to the actual and necessary ignorance of the great majority 
of voters both as to whom they are voting for and what they 
are voting about ; (2) to their utter inability to unite, of and 
among themselves, upon representative candidates for office, 
and (3) to Political Organization, which, started to help the 
people in this embarrassment, has, by the logic of the situation, 
become their corrupt and corrupting master. 

Now, to correct these false features, it is plainly necessary 
somehow (1) to bring the business of the voter within the 
limits of his probable acquaintance with the man he votes for, 



A NEW SYSTEM OF ELECTIONS. lit 

(2) of his substantial comprehension of the duties that his can- 
didate, if elected, will have to discharge, and (3) of his practi- 
cal ability to unite with his fellows at the polls in the pursuit 
of a common object, without calling the agency of Politicians 
to his help. These changes, and nothing less, will clear away 
the three fallacies of our present method of elections, and set 
democracy on the solid ground of truth and reason. 

But these objects are obviously impossible to be accom- 
plished under the present plan of the direct election of the 
functionaries of large constituencies by the people themselves. 
It would surely be unprofitable for each neighborhood to send 
a representative to Congress or the State legislature. It would 
make these bodies inconveniently numerous, if nothing worse. 
Neither can the mass of us by any means be brought to under- 
stand the difficult questions that the high officers of political 
society are constantly called on to decide. Equally impracti- 
cable is it for the majority of the people, or indeed any con- 
siderable portion of them, in Philadelphia or Iowa, Rhode 
Island or Atlanta, spontaneously to unite on a candidate for 
mayor or governor, and combine their endeavors for his 
support. 

By what device then, in this extremity, shall the present 
false relation of the voter to public authority in large constitu- 
encies be so modified as to give him his proper share in the 
management of the commonwealth? 

There is but one resort. Fas est ab hoste doceri. We must 
take a lesson from Politicians themselves. We can breakdown 
the rule of Political Organization only by adopting its methods. 
Our whole political life now hinges upon an instrumentality 
that is unknown to written constitutions, because that instru- 
mentality is one of nature's autochthons, against which all 
artifice is vain. It is the Caucus-chosen delegates, assembled 
in Convention, that now, in effect, appoint all our higher func- 
tionaries. We must make this Mayor of the Palace king. 
The people must turn over the prerogative of choosing gover- 
nors and legislators, now nominally exercised at the ballot 
box, to Representative Delegates. In the business of all large 
constituencies the Caucus and Convention must be substituted 
for the Polls. Thus only can the function of the voter be 



112 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

accommodated to his intelligence ; and thus only, the shadow 
of power discarded, can he secure its substance. 

Only a single accessory contrivance is needed. The popu- 
lar constituency must be marked out in a better way than it is 
now. The present fixed geographical boundaries of election 
districts are a great and necessary help to the engineer of our 
present politics. They serve him as a map, and their poll- 
lists, registry and returns are his tables of calculation. By 
these he fixes his work, distributes his forces, " lays his pipe," 
and " rolls his logs." This facility he must somehow be 
deprived of, or else he will still stake out our fortune. 

— Without farther preface I proceed to set forth a new Elec- 
tion System ; which, it is believed, will remedy the defects of 
the present, make democracy a reality where it is now but a 
name, and convert to success its ancient failure. 

A . — The Popular Constituency. 

(i.) In every town, ward or other civil division that ex- 
ceeds, say, two thousand in population, let the registered voters 
be divided by lot into five, nine or other odd number of equal 
sections or squads, after the following manner : Let all the 
names, each on a separate slip of paper, be put in a panel, and 
publicly drawn one by one, as the names of jurors are now 
drawn, by the town clerk, alderman or other suitable officer of 
the precinct, till the panel is cleared ; and, as they are drawn, 
let them be distributed into separate lists, A, B, C, and so 
forth. Each of these lists shall constitute a Primary Electoral 
Constituency. 

The expedient number of these sections will depend on 
the populousness of the ward or town that is thus divided 
up. In a large town it would generally be from five to 
nine, and in some swarming city ward perhaps two or three 
times as great. The essential point is, that this Constituency, 
when assembled together, should not be too large for orderly 
consultation. " Any assembly," says the philosophic Hildreth, 
" which consists of more than three or four hundred, loses the 
power of deliberation, and degenerates into a mere mob, in 
which the conception of the moment becomes contagious and 
omnipotent, and everything is carried by the noisiest and the 



A NEW SYSTEM OF ELECTIONS. 113 

most violent." Jefferson, in the same view, desired to lay out 
Virginia into election districts of not more than five hundred 
people each. 

(2.) Let each of these Constituencies be called together as 
soon as convenient, but not necessarily on the same day, by 
personal notice through the mail or otherwise, by posting or 
newspaper publication, or in more than one of these ways, and 
let it, retired by itself, proceed to choose an Elector to Repre- 
sent it in the further establishment of authority. 

(3.) Let this meeting be presided over by the alderman, 
supervisor or other fit officer of the precinct until a moderator 
is chosen from among its own members. Organization com- 
pleted by the appointment of a clerk, let the roll of members 
be called, and let each man in his turn vote for such Represent- 
ative, either viva voce or by ballot as he may prefer, — though 
the secrecy of the ballot would no doubt soon be discarded, 
as a resort unworthy of freemen. 

(4.) In the choice of a Representative Elector this Constit- 
uency should not be limited to the list of its own members, 
but should have the range of the whole body of voters in the 
town, ward or borough of which it might form a part. This 
is entirely consistent with the democratic principle, and would 
be much in aid of freedom, harmony and the best advice. 

(5.) Neither, for like reasons, should it be forbidden that 
more than one of these Constituencies should choose the same 
man, — each Elector of course having weight in his place in 
proportion to the number of Constituencies that he may 
appear for. 

(6.) The citizen should be forbidden, under pain of future 
disfranchisement, to refuse the Electoral office, unless in some 
prescribed way he had previously advised the precinct of his 
unwillingness to serve it in that capacity. 

(7.) This establishment of the Primary Constituency by lot. 
and its assemblage for the choice of a Representative Elector 
is to be repeated at stated intervals, — every year or two at 
first perhaps, though when the system is well at work, and its 
fruits have begun to ripen, once in four or six years will un- 
doubtedly be often enough. 

(8.) In the registry of voters for this fresh allotment let 
8 



J 14 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

only those names be put down that voted at the last election, 
and those who may make personal application for the privilege 
with due evidence of a right to it. The citizen who should 
forget, or remain unacquainted with such a regulation, or think 
it gave him too much trouble, had better be left off the roster 
of democracy altogether. 

(9.) To this choice of a Representative Elector let all pop- 
ular suffrage be limited ; — except in the case of towns Or other 
civil divisions of such small population that their voters, assem- 
bled in mass, can hold true conference. These shall continue 
to choose local officers as they do now. 

(10.) But let them, when assembled for that purpose, also 
each choose a Representative Elector to act for it in the wider 
spheres of democratic rule. 

B. — Electoral Colleges. 

(1.) Let the delegates so chosen in any town or ward con- 
stitute a College of Electors for it ; and let them, assembled at 
a day appointed, in open session and viva voce, elect all the 
prime functionaries of the precinct ; — clerks and other subordi- 
nate functionaries being left in all cases to be appointed and 
removed by those who are responsible for their conduct. 

(2.) Let these Primary Colleges also choose one or more 
Electors to represent them, and the people for whom they act, 
in a higher rank of Colleges, for the appointment of mayors, 
county officers, members of the State legislature and the 
House of Representatives. The body of this second class of 
Electors so chosen in any county shall constitute the county 
College ; in a city, the city College ; in an Assembly district, 
the Assembly College ; and so on. 

(3.) In like manner let this Secondary College in each As- 
sembly district appoint one delegate or more to represent it in 
an Electoral College of a still higher grade for the choice of gov- 
ernor and other State officers, the high judiciary, federal sen- 
ators and Presidential Electors. 

(4.) This last class of delegates, the Presidential Elec- 
tors, should meet in general assembly of the whole Union, 
as do delegates to party Presidential Conventions, and not, 
as now, in disconnected groups. If, in this regard, the method 



A NEW SYSTEM OF ELECTIONS. 115 

of the Constitution had not already in effect been super- 
seded by the method of Political Organization, the elec- 
tion of the Federal executive would constantly go to the 
House of Representatives, begetting repeated demoralization 
and danger. 

(5.) In each College the vote of an Elector should have 
weight as nearly as possible in proportion to the number of 
people that he might represent. 

This list of three grades of Representative Electors is made 
with special reference to New York and other large States, with 
whose method of Political Organization, in both parties, it so 
far accords. In smaller States one of them might perhaps be 
advantageously left out. 

C. — Office Tenure. 

Finally, I propose a new rule of Office Tenure. Although 
this system provides that the people shall be periodically 
called together in the manner described for a fresh expression 
of their will, it is not intended that any public functionary 
whatsoever shall hold Office for any defined term, but only at 
the pleasure of the power that appoints him. Accordingly, 
provision should be made for the re-assembling at any moment 
of each Popular Constituency and College of Electors, at its 
own call, to review its work. It is believed that such special 
meetings would very seldom be resorted to, or needed, but 
occasions will sometimes arise when the public welfare would 
strongly demand them. Meantime, every Office Holder, Rep- 
resentative Elector or any other, shall hold his place till his 
successor is appointed. 

Innumerable details and diversities in the practical applica- 
tion of this system of political construction, to make it work 
without hitch, and to suit it to all variety of situations, are 
here left unconsidered : only its general method is undertaken 
to be set forth. 

— Although to me, who have so long contemplated the sub- 
ject, this abstract statement of my project looks plain enough, 
as it must also to every expert of politics, yet, in order that 
the most careless and uninstructed reader may not fail fully 
to comprehend it, it may be worth while specially to set forth 



Il6 THE COxMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

the method of its application in a particular case. For this 
purpose we will take a city of, say, sixty thousand inhabitants ; 
which we will suppose to be divided into eight wards, and 
into two Assembly districts ; to lie part in one county and 
part in another; and to comprise but a third of a Congres- 
sional, and half of a judicial district. 

We will suppose the first ward of such city to contain four- 
teen hundred and fifty voters. Let these be divided, in the 
manner above described, into nine lots. Each of these shall 
choose an Elector, and the nine Electors shall constitute a 
Ward College for the appointment of all the officers of the 
ward. 

Joined in a City College with the Electors of all the other 
wards, they shall choose a mayor, treasurer, city attorney, and 
so on. 

The Electors from whatever wards constitute an Assembly 
district shall collect by themselves to elect a Member of As- 
sembly. 

The Electors from the wards that lie in one county shall 
unite with the Electors from the other towns or cities in the 
same county in a County College, to choose a sheriff, clerk, 
prosecuting attorney, and other county officers. 

Now, for the establishment of the second grade of Electoral 
Colleges, let the Assembly College, (which is taken partly be- 
cause it represents a constituency most nearly uniform in num- 
bers,) besides choosing an Assemblyman, also elect one (or, say, 
three) Delegates to represent it in a State College for the choice 
of State officers and federal senators ; in a judicial college for 
the election of a member of the supreme court for its dis- 
trict ; in a College for choosing a State senator, and in another 
College for the election of a member of the federal House of 
Representatives, and of a Presidential Elector. 

Finally, let the Presidential Electors from all the States, 
chosen as above, in College assembled at Washington, say who 
shall be the nation's head. 

In the case of a great city it would be expedient to have 
the City Electoral College raised to the second class, by consti- 
tuting it of delegates from the several assembly, or ward Col- 
leges. 



A NEW SYSTEM OF ELECTIONS. 117 

So, when a State senatorial district is small in numbers, its 
representative in the legislature should be chosen, like an as- 
semblyman, by a College of Electors of the first class, that is, 
composed of the immediate delegates of the popular constitu- 
encies within the district. 

Also, in States of narrow dimensions it might be better to 
have all the members of the highest judicial bench chosen by 
the State College. 

Other examples of possibly expedient variations in the ap- 
plication of this system hardly need to be given ; for such is its 
flexibility that it can be logically adapted to every arrangement 
of the civil divisions of the country. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE PECULIAR FEATURES OF THIS PLAN. 

SIMPLE as is this scheme, and brief in description, it never- 
theless materially alters the customary attitude of democ- 
racy in quite a number of particulars. Let us look at the chief 
of them, summarily, in their rationale. 

(a.) The Lot-drawn Popular Constituency. 

In the first place, it furnishes, in the Lot-drawn Constitu- 
ency of the Primary Representative Elector, a new integration 
of democracy. This method of dividing up popular power has 
the advantage over the geographical, which now universally 
obtains, of allowing of no fraud or injustice whatsoever, — such 
as Gerrymandering, constituencies of equal political weight but 
of unequal numbers, and the like prevailing wrongs to democ- 
racy. It has the still greater advantage of tripping by the 
heels the professional Political Organizer, by making up the 
popular constituency anew at every election. Besides, min- 
gling together afresh at frequent periods, as it does, all the vari- 
ous elements and individualities of society, it will surely effect 
a truer representation of the common will, from hour to hour 
and under all circumstances, than any other system has effected, 
or promises to effect. Here no special attempt can cope with 
general opinion and influence. When the germ of democratic 
authority shall be so symmetrically shaped, its fruits will surely 
never be deformed. 

It is fit to remark in this connection that other than geo- 
graphical divisions of political society are not infrequent in his- 
tory, nor have they been by any means unsuccessful. Castes 
and aristocracies are examples. But one nearer akin to my 
method is furnished in the centenarii of the Goths and Visi- 
goths ; a device borrowed by the Middle Ages from the mil- 



THE PECULIAR FEATURES OF THIS PLAN. 1 19 

itary colonies of conquering Rome, and passed in turn to 
England's great law-giver, King Alfred, in the tithing-man and 
similar functionaries. In that institution there was, to be sure, 
no lot-drawing, but there was a narrow numerical integration 
of political society, like what is here proposed : and that that 
was mainly a convenience of power, while this is meant to be 
in aid of liberty, does not diminish its force in illustration of 
my argument. The wisdom of old Greece employed it in the 
selection of juries, (discasterai,) as we do now. Moreover, 
the lot is sanctioned in both of the Testaments. In short, 
innumerable instances of its application to matters of social 
adjustment fully entitle it to be ranked among the methods 
of nature. 

(b.) A new and needed Singleness and Simplicity of Popular 
Function in Politics. 

Under this system the voter, as a member of any large 
constituency, will have before him the plain and easy business 
of helping to select a representative from among his neighbors 
to act for him in the establishment of high authority. Thus 
will his work be cleared from difficulty, and his conscience from 
doubt. 

This surely is no small reform. Under our present consti- 
tutions we are set to an impossible task. At a recent election 
in Chicago sixty-eight public functionaries were to be voted 
for. It is about the same in every large community whenever 
it chooses its local, State and federal functionaries at the same 
time. Yesterday, November 7, 1876, I voted for quite two- 
thirds as many as that, though municipal officers and school 
commissioners were not to be elected then. 

Now. the theory of democracy is, that in each case we vote 
for a man that we have good reason to think is eminently fit 
for the duties he will have to discharge ; but the notorious 
fact is, that, nineteen times out of twenty, we know nothing 
whatever about him. Every year we are called upon to vote 
for forty men, more or less, scattered all over the city, the 
county, the State and the nation, each of whom is to be 
discovered by us to be qualified for the business we propose 
to set him at. The highest talent and industry, with every 



120 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

opportunity and vacant for the task, would hardly suffice to 
qualify a man properly to do this : and yet common folks, so 
much engrossed with the supreme business of getting a living 
and so thoughtless, are expected to do it ! So ignorant are 
the mass of us, actually and of necessity, about the special qual- 
ifications of the several men we vote for, that if the names 
on the ticket were shifted round so that the candidate for con- 
gress were running for State engineer, the superintendent of 
education for coroner, and the sheriff for judge, it would be all 
the same to us in nine cases out often. 

I know not what could more disgust every reflecting mind 
with our present system of elections than this feature of it, or 
more clearly demonstrate its unsoundness. 

(c.) The Voter will be acting within the sphere of his Intelligence 
and his Power. 

The three rank impostures that have been pointed out as 
inseparable from the present system of direct popular elections 
in large constituencies are here effectually expunged. No 
longer, at the dictate of leaders whom we have not chosen f 
shall we vote for men whom we do not know, to discharge duties 
that we do not understand. 

(i.) As to power, the whole business of the voter will be 
within arm's length, and if he still remain the mere follower 
and tool of adroit politicians, which he will not, it will no 
longer be of necessity, as it is now, but of his own choice. 

(2.) As to his knowledge of men, while it is not pretended 
that every voter in a town or ward personally knows all the 
other voters in it, it is claimed that, with some rare exceptions 
in new communities, the great majority of voters, either 
through actual intercourse or neighborhood repute, are well 
cognizant of the character of most of the prominent citizens 
of the precinct, and can therefore take intelligent part in the 
selection of a Primary Representative Elector. Consider what, 
in place of such trustworthy information, the average voter has 
now to rely on in this regard when he is called on to vote for 
Member of Congress or governor! almost absolutely nothing, 
save the reckless, venal or fanatical laudations and defamations 
of party candidates from the newspapers and the stump. Yet 



THE PECULIAR FEATURES OF THIS PLAN. 121 

these avail to raise foul birds so high in public contemplation 
that they are taken for eagles, and to drag eagles in the dirt. 
Of all things, political reputation is now about the cheapest and 
most transitory. Out of ten names bruited and emblazoned in 
our politics a dozen years ago nine are already in oblivion, and 
the tenth hardly merits its exceptional remembrance. This is 
but the forgery of fame. I mean to restore its authentic sig- 
nature. 

(3.) The average voter is also fully competent to under- 
stand the substance of the business that his Representative is 
here set at. There is no mystification, complexity or profun- 
dity whatever about it. 

(d.) Calling the Roll. 

In the fourth place I introduce into the assembly of the 
people the calling of the roll when the vote is taken. This 
is customary in the business of all higher political bodies, 
such as municipal councils and Congress, as being necessary 
to order, attention, accuracy, completeness, and clear respon- 
sibility, and will here be equally conducive to the same impor- 
tant objects. The registry of voters cannot be of full avail 
against fraud without it. 

(e.) The Conference of the People. 

I make the actual Assembly of voters in Conference the 
bottom course of politics. " Kings, Lords and Commons, " 
said Erskine, " are but a machine to put twelve men in a box." 
Here, conversely, a present, personal inquest of the people 
is made the original root and sole authorization of every 
grade atid act of public power. If not the most novel, 
this is certainly the most virtuous feature of the system of 
democratic government here propounded. 

Only when men are brought face to face do they fully un- 
derstand each other, or can they hold true counsel ; nor with- 
out such approach can concert of purpose or action be arrived 
at, and democracy unified and empowered. Here only are 
represented the secret deliberations of the hearthstone, and 
here only can the real voice of the people be heard : what 
is now prated of as that august note is but an echo of the call 



122 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

and cry of politicians. How essential are the actual assembly 
and consultation of the people to a true expression of their 
will and the exertion of their power, and how much they are 
an instinctive impulse of the spirit of democracy, may be seen 
in this, that in every political or social emergency, about war, 
taxes, charity or any thing else, a public meeting is always 
called for. 

But there is no need to theorize about the matter : our 
own history furnishes the crowning demonstration of facts. 
I but copy in this feature of my system the old town-meeting 
of New England, and give its influence an universal scope. 
Whatever beneficent political instruction the country owes to 
that region, which, by general consent, is not small, was pre- 
pared in the township system. Nowhere else has democracy 
ever so highly distinguished itself. Let Thomas Jefferson 
bear witness to its enormous virtue. His embargo act, ap- 
proved by all the nation besides, was contested by a mere 
handful of the people, seated far off in the circumference of the 
country, but wielding the advantage that is our present topic. 
His courageous spirit almost quailed before their opposition. 
" How powerfully," says he, " did we feel the energy of this 
system in the case of the Embargo ! I felt the foundation 
of the government shaken under my feet by the New England 
township. There was not an individual in those States whose 
body was not thrown with all its momentum into action, and, 
although the whole of the other States were known to be in 
favor of the measure, the organization of this little minority 
enabled it to override the Union." " The longer he lived," 
says Mr. Parton, " the more he felt the need of a subdivision 
of territory like the towns of New England," nor did he cease 
to urge it upon Virginia until his dying day. 

But the vital secret of the " energy of the township system 
of New England," this enthusiast of democracy failed after 
all fully to comprehend. It is not due, as he seems to have 
thought, principally to " organization," however important 
that may be ; nor is it due to the mere propinquity of voters to 
the polls, enabling them easily to gather there, to which he in 
another letter ascribes it, — for surely the voters in our cities, 
now impotent, defrauded and robbed above all other communi- 



THE PECULIAR FEATURES OF THIS PLAN. 1 23 

ties, have no difficulty about that. The chief root of its virtue, 
as an element of politics, is in the gathering of neighbors and 
acquaintances in actual conference. Accordingly John Adams, 
when minister to the British court, replied to an inquiry about 
the cause of the superiority of New England in politics, that 
it was owing to the " town meeting, the school meeting, the 
church meeting and the meeting of the militia on training 
day. " Here is the keystone of democracy. In the presence 
of the popular assembly tyrants tremble, and throughout his- 
tory it has been a chief care with them to forbid, or at least 
to supervise it. Whenever its now fast waning influence in 
our politics shall wholly disappear, we shall shove off into un- 
fathomed depths. 

In such assemblages alone has democracy shown well, be- 
cause only here is it in full possession of itself. Only when 
its units of influence are in the presence of each other can each 
enjoy its rightful sway, and a genuine result be begot. In this 
encounter and combat of native powers the base but showy 
elements of demagogism and fanatic partisanship are sent 
flying, like coruscating cinders between the blacksmith's 
hammer and the anvil, while solid metal remains and receives 
the workman's impress. So, too, by the heat and force of 
intimate contact and discussion, all diverse impulses and in- 
tentions are here welded into a homogeneous whole, form- 
ing a shaft of power whose mighty motion might well be 
felt, as Jefferson felt it, beneath the distant seats of fixed 
authority. 

Meantime, this open court is in the way of all wrongful 
procedure. Many vicious things are done in a corner that 
would never be dared in the forum. 

Conduct of this Conference. 

But the probable behavior of a section of the people thus 
gathered by impartial lot for the choice of a Representative 
Elector deserves more particular consideration : for as all the 
conclusions of geometry are ultimately based on that simple 
proposition in the beginning of Euclid where one triangle is 
laid upon another, so the success of the whole frame of govern- 
ment as here set out will depend upon the demeanor of this 



124 ™ E COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

little assembly. Like that proposition too, this must be stud- 
ied with the mind's eye ; for though political truth in its crude 
and partial forms may be collected from history and statis- 
tics, in its exactitude and completeness it is the deduction of an 
informed imagination only. The comparison may be carried 
a step farther : as in that proposition it is shown that when 
three chief elements fall together all the rest must coincide, so 
here, if popular power, intelligence and opportunity are at hand, 
democracy will not fail to do its perfect work in every par- 
ticular 

(i.) In the first place, all the circumstances of this occasion 
will be favorable to the full autonomy of the people. Here 
surely the anticipatory arts by which self-seeking politicians 
now get control of the party Caucus will find little opportu- 
nity or inducement. Time will be wanting between the mak- 
ing-up and the session of this fresh formed constituency to 
hunt out and manipulate its scattered members, and the ad- 
vantage to be gained thereby will be too small, distant, and 
uncertain. Above all, this Reformed Caucus cannot be packed. 
Of course there is nothing to hinder a previous consultation 
of its partisan members, or a combination of interests, opinions 
or influences for uniting upon a particular man as candidate 
for Representative Elector : but neither is there any thing ob- 
jectionable to the spirit of democracy in their doing so. The 
supreme excellence of this feature of my system is, that all 
such arrangements, and all specialties and diversities, will be 
brought up with a round turn to a common mooring when the 
general constituency meet together face to face. 

(2.) In this equal and law-ruled assembly of the people the 
tricks, frauds and brow-beating that constantly characterize 
the present irresponsible party Caucus will have no chance. 
No minor faction can prevail, as so often it does now, by virtue 
of " having the organization, " nor any sinister ambition or 
conspiring clique secretly carry on its corrupt negotiations. 
Here will be no sudden turning of the hat, no repeating, no 
false counting and no false returns. The politician, in a word, 
will be as other men. 

(3.) Meantime all democratic preferences and opinions will 
have a fair field, and whatever influence justly belongs to 



THE PECULIAR FEATURES OF THIS PLAN. 1 25 

character, talent, position, occupation, property, education, or 
any other element of social force, will find full scope. 

(4.) Add to this the gravity of the occasion, the retirement 
and quiet, and the unimpeded opportunity for consultation, 
deliberation and debate, and it can hardly be conceived how 
the action of this Primary Constituency will be other than 
truly representative of the sober popular will. 

But what manner of man is likely to be chosen, under 
these circumstances, by this microcosm of democracy, to take 
the place of the present omnipotent delegate of the party Cau- 
cus ? Will the mass of the people, acting freely and within the 
sphere of their knowledge, be likely to prefer corrupt and 
incompetent representatives? If they will, then surely democ- 
racy must forever be a failure. For my part I am confident 
that they will not : but the answer of each of my readers 
to this vital question will depend on his estimate of human 
nature as it now shows itself in this country. This inquiry 
is concerned (1) with popular virtue, and (2) with popular in- 
telligence. 

(1.) As to the former point, there appears to be a growing 
tendency, much promoted by recent sorry phenomena in our 
politics, to regard all men as of evil disposition. But this does 
not accord with my observation. I am satisfied that the great 
majority of civilized mankind are ready to do what is right, 
even at some sacrifice of self. This is to be governed by a 
sense of duty. But, however that may be, the voter, in the 
position where I put him, is going to do the best he knows 
how, because here the path of duty and the path of interest 
will almost always coincide. Not more than one in ten of your 
neighbors has, or can have, so great other concern about 
politics as to see that the public business is wisely, justly and 
economically conducted. It is impossible to imagine what 
sufficient temptation the mass of the community can have 
knowingly to bestow the function of the primary Representative 
Elector upon men unworthy of it. 

(2.) As to the intelligence of mankind in general, few have 
a lower estimate of it than myself. But I hold that within the 
scope of his faculties and observation the clown is as wise 
as the philosopher. To deny the general trustworthiness of 



126 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

human judgment, within the field of its information, is to take 
away all foothold of conclusion in morals, politics, science and 
everything else. What I claim to do, is to set the voter at a 
work that his capacity and knowledge are equal to. I limit 
his function to taking part in the choice of a Representative 
Elector from within the area of his neighborhood and intimacy. 
Seldom are men who come in frequent contact falsely judged of 
by each other. Far-flying rumor is deceitful, but the testimo- 
ny of comrades is true. No honest man fears to trust his 
reputation at large to those whom he lives among. There is no 
companionship that does not in the main recognize its wise 
members and its honest, its fools and its rogues. The deacon 
of a church is nearly always representative of its piety, the 
president of a club of its spirit, the captain of a band of gold- 
hunters of its enterprise and hardihood. 

How just is the reputation of men among their neighbors 
in the long run I lately noticed a striking proof in the Hall of 
the Board of Trade in my own town. Here are hung up, for 
honor and example, the portraits of certain of her long-resident 
citizens — of James Piatt, Henry Fitzhugh, Thomas Kingsford 
and Alvin Bronson. Not in a single instance was this distinction 
unmerited. Also I well remember how, when I came to the 
same town a quarter of a century ago, expecting to make it my 
permanent home, I held attentive ear to learn what general 
report might say about my future neighbors. I heard that A 
was peaceful and B pugnacious, that C was honest but indis- 
creet* D generous but unjust, that E was impulsive, and F cun- 
ning, that G could be trusted, but not H, that this politician 
was a demagogue and that a wire-puller, that this man had 
education and that man sense, the most neither, and mighty 
few both, — and so on through the whole category of quali- 
ties and qualifications. After a long period of familiarity 
I find not a name in this directory of character that was mis- 
printed. 

The trusty guidance of repute is not lacking, as some might 
suppose it to be, even in the populous wards of great cities. 
Men are thick scattered through New York, even in the lowest 
wards, whose worth is nigh as well recognized among the peo- 



THE PECULIAR FEATURES OF THIS PLAN. \2J 

pie as the corners of the streets. It is from among these that 
democracy will select its Representative Electors when it is 
gathered in the unembarrassed constituency that I have set up. 
No doubt this method will do better in some cases than in 
others. I do not claim that the best man will always be chosen, 
or even a good man. The highest qualities are somewhat 
above ordinary comprehension, and there may be some neigh- 
borhoods where folly and misbehavior are at a premium. This 
only is claimed — that the men chosen by the people in this free 
conference and fair struggle to act for them will be their true 
Representatives. Surely there will in general be poor chance 
in this arena, unless I grossly misunderstand the American 
people, for the mere demagogue or the jobber, the man of 
putty or the man of crotchets, the lavish man or the permy- 
wise and pound-foolish man, or any of the other unworthy 
characters that now keep us in trouble and disgrace. On the 
contrary it is believed that, as Members of Council in the 
Colonies obtained their commissions from the king on account 
of " their wealth, station and loyalty, 1 ' so here will they alone 
who have a solid stake in the country, an honorable standing, 
and a patriotic spirit, receive the confidence of democracy, now 
first endowed with its royal prerogative. 

(/.) A large extension of the 

Representative Principle in Elections 

is the next important feature of this system. In our present 
constitutions this method of democracy shows itself but bro- 
kenly, surmounting here and there in an unsystematic way the 
dead level of the ballot box. A logical completeness in its 
application is here attempted. In all cases where a constit- 
uency is too large for the convenient assembly, orderly con- 
sultation, or presumably intelligent action of the whole body 
of it, it is to be cut up into handy squads, which will act, not 
directly, but through delegates. 

The right application of the principle of Representation has 
always been regarded by philosophic minds as the key to the 
success of popular government ; and has accordingly employed 
the constant attention of the framers and students of organic 
law in republican societies. In modern times Montesquieu, 



128 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

Locke, Sieyes, Hamilton, Bentham, Grote, Hildreth, Mills and 
a thousand other friends of liberty have laboriously considered 
it, with the result of innumerable various conclusions and 
devices. 

The framers of our own institutions gave the problem careful 
thought, and embodied their conclusions in the election of 
federal senators by State legislatures, in the Colleges of Presi- 
dential Electors, and in the appointment of judges and various 
executive functionaries by a governor, mayor or president, 
with or without the advice and consent of legislators or 
aldermen. 

But the growing misbehavior of our politics has brought the 
subject into fresh discussion. At the present time general 
opinion, authorship, and the work of constitutional conventions, 
seem to be about equally divided between a closer limitation, 
and a farther extension of the principle of Representation. On 
the one hand, seen that the colleges of Presidential Electors 
have become the mere mouth-piece of Political Organization, 
and even threaten to be robbed at Washington of the power to 
certify for their respective States, the immediate choice of the 
federal executive by the people is called for. So, in view 
of the partisanship and other vices of the State legislatures 
that now elect Federal Senators, it has been proposed to be- 
stow the choice of these in the same quarter. On the other 
hand, the election of the high judiciary and other officers of 
wide jurisdiction by the people not working satisfactorily, many 
demand a return to the system of appointment by governors 
and mayors, or by legislatures and common councils. When 
New York City finds itself suffering from the ballot-box, it 
turns to Commissions appointed by the legislature at Albany 
for rescue : these using her almost worse, the popular voice is 
recalled to power. In the argument for neither side does either 
reason or the lessons of history much appear. Each cause 
finds its chief strength in the failures of the other, — and finds 
there indeed no mean support ; for certain it is that the re- 
sults of our present ways of establishing public authority in all 
large constituencies, whether by popular ballot, executive 
appointment, or however else, furnish little to be proud of. 

It would be a long undertaking to analyze and set forth in 



THE PECULIAR FEATURES OF THIS PLAN. 1 29 

theory the full relations of the Representative principle in pop- 
ular government ; and still more would it be laborious for the 
writer, and tedious to the reader, to illustrate and confirm the 
argument by sufficient historical examples. But, fortunately, 
this toil and tedium can be spared. If we seek aright, full in- 
struction can be got from higher quarters than dubious specu- 
lation, or the misty records of governments gone by. We 
stand in the very presence of phenomena of overwhelming 
significance in this regard. The spontaneous appearance and 
now universal rule of Political Organization, whose system of 
Representation I little more than copy, furnish a demonstra- 
tion of nature's methods that only fatuity can disregard. It is 
" a higher law " than was ever written on parchment that has 
put the present Caucus and Convention on the throne. They 
are of nature's royal line, and will never yield their place till 
democratic power shall clothe itself with their own purple 
habiliments and wield their very sceptre. 

How natural and indispensable is this method of democracy 
may be witnessed in the fact that it is now being adopted in 
Great Britain and Prussia, pari passu with the growth of popu- 
lar rule. For example, I notice that Mr. Jacob Bright was 
nominated (February, 1876,) for Member of Parliament from 
Manchester by a Convention of Caucus Delegates. As fast as 
the influence of an aristocracy of blood and money give way, 
Political Organization must take their place. There is no one 
of us that goes to the party Caucus, or calls on another people 
to do it and blames them if they do it not, or that sits in the 
party Convention, but what bears witness to the solid authority 
of Political Organization. Not less do they who in indepen- 
dent popular council of whatever name undertake to displace 
old parties ; for they constantly adopt the very methods of 
them whom they rebel against. 

Here surely are sufficient signs of some grave defect in our 
present system. The fact is that the chair of true democratic 
authority is left vacant by our written constitutions, and 
that Political Organization, a child of nature, has seated itself 
thereon. Born out of honest wedlock though the intruder 
be, he has good blood in his veins. Incapable to expel, we 
must legitimate him. For the self-seeking Politicians who 
9 



130 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

are now his secretaries and chamberlains we must substitute 
men of our own selection. Thus will our present tyrant be- 
come our benefactor. 

The most that my proposal differs from the present con- 
struction of our politics is that I merge election in nomination, 
making form and substance coincide. The Poll is now, no- 
toriously, a mere reflexion of the Caucus and Convention. 
To set the people to review at the ballot box the action of 
their Representative Delegates would be merely to carry along 
a troublesome superfluity. 

(g.) Graded Representation. 

A logical Gradation in the Electoral function is also here 
attempted, such as will keep pace with the expanding im- 
portance of political charge between the neighborhood and the 
nation, and correspond with that actual range of capacity 
among men that reaches from good sense to statesmanship. 
Hardly can this plan fail to secure that the upper Colleges of 
Electors will be composed of men widely known for virtuous 
character, for understanding of the requirements of the higher 
public service, and for acquaintance with whomever in the pre- 
cinct is fittest to meet them. This virtue, surely, will this sys- 
tem have, — that the superior functionaries of law, judgment 
and execution will be appointed by those on whom public 
confidence is, as it were, accumulated, by the elect of the elect, 
by number multiplied into quality. 

Only in such a way can large society hope to enjoy, save 
by rare accident, the instruction and guidance of its superior 
members ; and only till this comes about can it be well con- 
ducted. Common minds are engrossed with common things, 
or look on greater with vision dim, distorted and befogged ; 
but great intelligence, like him who sits in the clear air of the 
mountain top, gathers wide regions in its survey. 

What we lack above all else is statesmanship ; but we shall 
never have statesmen to rule the state till its rulers are chosen 
by statesmen. The judgment of peers is the only judgment. 
No man can appreciate a qualification that he does not in some 
degree possess himself. The commonalty, in every wide juris- 
diction, has nigh always preferred a Wilkes to a Burke, a Dan- 



THE PECULIAR FEATURES OF THIS PLAN. 131 

ton to a Sieyes, a Matthew Lyon to a Robert Morris, — being 
incapable, at such a distance, of distinguishing worth from 
worthlessness. 

The Ministry of Great Britain, so long and so constantly 
victorious over all the Eastern hemisphere, is an example of 
the virtue of the principle of Graded Representation. That 
authority is not chosen by the people themselves, nor by the 
mass of their immediate representatives in tne House of Com- 
mons, but by a score or so of men whom the opinion of Par- 
liament silently appoints to the duty. 

That the measure of talent, knowledge and integrity among 
Electors of the higher ranks will be in proportion to the mag- 
nitude of their charge can hardly be doubted. All along in 
this promotion the same suitable intelligence and interest will 
obtain that make local government good for local purposes, and 
general for general. The verdict of long history is not more 
trusty than will be democratic choice when it shall travel the 
sober stages that are here set for it. As in literature the criti- 
cism of successive generations constantly discriminates more 
justly between Bacon and Boyle, Shakespeare and Ben. John- 
son, so by the repeated scrutiny and sifting of this system will 
democracy in its larger forms surely discover its worthiest 
guides. Only in this way can the sneering but pertinent in- 
quiry of Carlyle, " how can we expect forty millions, mostly 
fools, to have wisdom to get themselves well governed ? " be 
answered. 

It deserves to be mentioned that these Electors, not less in 
the higher Colleges than in the lowest, will be chosen in a pro- 
found signification by their neighbors. Only with narrow and 
slothful natures does neighborhood mean mere proximity of 
place. The fellowship of intellect, information and sentiment 
has no such boundaries. Genius communes with genius across 
continents and seas. The great scientific and benevolent 
bodies of the time are composed of members scattered in ge- 
ography, but collected in sympathy. In every department of 
thought, business or philanthropy where freedom is, its mag- 
nates gather in circle; and it will be so in politics, whenever 
it shall be loosed from its present bondage. 

In the choice of the highest public functionaries by this 



132 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

method such spontaneity of just results may fairly be looked 
for as we partly witness in our mother country, where, in some 
crisis, a new cabinet, disowning royalty, aristocracy, democracy, 
hierarchy and every other special interest and influence in the 
record of its birth, springs suddenly into life, raised by the 
incantation of the time, and armed with the gathered force of 
the national will. In this country, on the other hand, such 
change of administration now comes about through the long- 
labored combination of self-seeking Politicians only, gathering 
to their party side, after infinite contest and hurly-burly, a few 
more voices of the distracted people. 

In fine, this system of Graded Representation, is believed 
to be the true architecture of civil society in all its larger con- 
structions. To establish authority in city, State or nation by 
general ballot is but the random piling of a cairn. But I build 
up the structure brick by brick, beam by beam, and story by 
story. The right of the majority to rule is the immovable 
foundation of the fabric, and the prevailing sense of men its 
sound material ; its rising stories will surely embody in suc- 
cession still nobler conceits, and its lofty entablature and 
crowning dome cannot but express at last the highest purposes 
of the age. 

But the probable behavior of the Representative Elector, 
who is here made the Grand Vizier of democracy, deserves a 
moment's closer attention ; for all is not fair that seems. Our 
present election methods are specious, but their actual results 
are damnable. Will not this system also disappoint us ? 

That the Representative Elector of whatever grade will be 
fairly competent to his duty, and of reputed integrity, his free 
selection by a constituency, whether College or people, that 
must be presumed to know him, is the best guarantee than can 
be asked for. If, therefore, this trustee of democracy betray 
his trust, it must be because of his indifference to the public 
welfare, or from a hidden corruptibility. As to the former, no 
man can be regardless of the general weal till he is regardless 
of himself, and till all the wells of sympathy are dried up within 
his breast. About the probability of the latter men will differ 
according to their various estimates of the virtue of mankind, 
as triply derived from temperament, consciousness, and what 



THE PECULIAR FEATURES OF THIS PLAN. 



JJ 



they think they see. Pessimists, self-excusing knaves, and the 
shallow-sighted minds that take the behavior of our politics 
for a demonstration of human nature, constantly echo the say- 
ing of Walpole " that every man has his price." But this at 
the worst was never true except in the signification that " all 
that a man hath will he give for his life." Nor is it true even 
there. The long record of martyrdom for religion, country, 
honor and humanity abundantly shows that there are those 
whom no money can buy. 

However this may be, it is difficult to conceive, in the case 
of towns, wards and other small constituencies, where the suf- 
ficient pecuniary, or other wrongful inducement is to come 
from that will draw aside from the path of duty any consider- 
able portion of the men who may be chosen by their com- 
panions to represent them in the Primary Electoral College. 
With the rising grades of this Representation the sense of 
right, it cannot be doubted, will constantly strengthen ; so that 
this security of great affairs will be in proportion to their 
temptations. 

Meanwhile, whatever gives honor heart and holds it to its 
post will here abound. No ribbon, medal or diploma was 
ever such stamp of merit, could command such wide respect, 
or so stir the emulation of dutiful men, as will the position 
of Representative Elector. In her day of glory Venice caused 
to be inscribed in a libro (Toro the names of her worthiest 
citizens. When this system shall be in force the list of 
Representative Electors will be the Golden Register of the 
Republic. To prophecy the wanton self-degradation of him 
who has^reached the dignity to be recorded there is to spit 
on human nature. It is to disregard all the lessons of history 
too, for always the love of honor has been about the last sen- 
timent to depart from the human mind. 

It is no small thing, in this regard, that the position of 
Representative Elector will be one of peculiar confidence. To 
him, as to a friend trusted without guarantee, society hands 
over its whole welfare. Noblesse oblige. Honor is bred in 
places of trust. If all other bonds were wanting, this would 
not fail alone to hold the Representative Elector to the faithful 
and considerate discharge of his duty. It is great argument 



134 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

for this conviction, that when the Presidency lately hung sus- 
pended in a feather balance no trustee of party power could 
be found who would sell out. 

Moreover, the Representative Elector will discharge his 
functions in the full view of them who have confided in him. 
Here is no place to hide. Horrid ignominy out of doors, as 
well as shame within the heart, will forever attend the abuse 
of that confidence. It is less terrible to bear the condemna- 
tion of all the world beside than to meet the eye of him who 
has put his trust in us and been betrayed. 

This sentiment of honor, it should be noticed, is especially 
needed in public life ; for to the calculating conscience it will 
never seem an hundredth part so bad to steal from the 
public a thousand dollars, where it would hardly be felt by the 
individual, as to rob the private pocket of a shilling. 

The sentiment of fellowship also, it is believed, will urge on 
this officer of democracy in the path of virtue. An esprit du 
corps, such as still guards the character of our army and navy 
amid surrounding degradation, may fairly be expected to hold 
sway in the Electoral Colleges. The fraternity of honor — to 
refer again to the faithfulness of politicians toward each other 
— should surely be as strong as the fraternity of fraud. 

In judging how the Representative Elector will demean 
himself, it should be remembered that his place, unlike that of 
the delegate of Political Organization whom he is meant to 
supersede, will not be the acquisition of his own labor and 
expenditure, and the opportunities of which he can accordingly, 
by no mean claim, call his own property, to be bargained 
about like the products of any other farm, but will b#the free 
bestowal of his neighbors and acquaintances. 

Neither will this magistrate be able to throw the responsi- 
bility of his course back upon party authorization or requirement, 
as the Representatives of Political Organization do of theirs ; 
for, not a portion of the people, but the whole, will have par- 
ticipated in his election. Nor can he cast it forward upon a 
confirmatory vote of the people ; for there will be here no sub- 
sequent popular poll to pass upon his action. Now when a 
bad man is put into power, the people lay it to the Polit- 
icians who nominated him, and Politicians to the people 



THE PECULIAR FEATURES OF THIS PLAN. 1 35 

who elected him : but there will be no room for such evasion 
here. 

But what is there, it may be asked, to hinder self-seekers, 
banded together, from managing the Colleges of Electors as 
they now do Party Conventions, and fixing appointments to 
suit their own interests ? Nothing, I grant, absolutely noth- 
ing, but the character of the Electors themselves, doubly 
spurred, as they will be, by the greatness and directness of their 
obligations, to do what is right. Fraud and falsity will surely 
have no advantage in this open assembly of the people's Dele- 
gates, any more than in the retired Conference of the people 
themselves. If liberty's selected men betray her here, then 
liberty is a delusion. But they will not. These bodies will 
come together without previous sinister obligation, concert or 
entanglement, and will find both full opportunity and every 
inducement toward integrity and independence. Not that there 
will be no room for the contest or combination of interests, no 
demand for a distribution of offices according to geography or 
influence, or that party, prejudice and selfishness will have no 
voice, — but that the power of all such mischievous elements 
will be the most diminished that human nature admits of, and 
that it cannot but be infinitely less than it is in the Conven- 
tions of Party Politicians which now control our destinies. 

Let it be noticed that how these Colleges of Electors will 
conduct themselves is by no means to be judged of by the 
behavior of any of the bodies that under our present constitu- 
tions exercise resembling functions. These all are utterly lost 
to their original design. Our Presidential Colleges, set, in 
theory, to an independent and most exalted duty, have long 
since notoriously become in fact but the honorary secretaries of 
Political Organization. They have escaped rottenness by petri- 
faction. So, the legislatures that choose Federal Senators and 
many State functionaries, and the common councils to whom 
is now committed the appointment of various municipal 
officers, are the product, and therefore the servitors, of the 
same evil authority, and are habited perpetually in the foul 
garments of their parentage. In the best of them democracy 
is metamorphosed into mere partisanship. No more were such 
bodies as the Council of Appointment under the first constitu- 



136 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

tion of this State at all analogous to what is here proposed. 
That was a narrow dynasty, gathered by hereditary pretension, 
bureaucracy and party intermixed, and giving little employ- 
ment to the virtues of democracy at large. 

(A.) Isolation of the Function of Appointment. 

It is the next peculiarity of this system that it wholly sep- 
arates the appointing power from every other political charge. 
This important business is now constantly added, in the most 
promiscuous way, to legislative, executive, and even judicial 
duties. The President not merely is the executive and holds 
supremacy in our legislature, but also has substantially the 
construction of the judicial bench. Governors and mayors 
find added to their executive function the making of no end of 
appointments that have properly no connection with it. The 
Federal Senate, — surely occupied enough with making laws, — 
must also take part in the appointment of judges, collectors, 
post-masters and foreign ministers. So, State legislatures help 
appoint Federal Senators and State functionaries. The like 
with municipal councils. Even the judiciary is diverted from 
its proper business in this direction, — appointing, in the 
State of New York, for instance, commissioners of lunacy, ex- 
cise, railroads and so on, and, in Philadelphia, various munici- 
pal officers. Such mixture and multiplication of concerns can 
but embarrass every public duty. The affair of selecting ru- 
lers is wholly foreign to the special capabilities that are needed 
to make, interpret or maintain the laws, and should be set 
apart by itself, as will be done under this plan. 

Thus will not a few of the vain checks and balances which 
incompetent political mechanics have laboriously contrived for 
the regulation of democratic government be got out of the 
way. When the people shall hold sway, no check will be 
needed ; and when their will shall settle on one side, no counter- 
acting balance can avail. 

My plan involves a still deeper virtue. 

(7.) Men, not Measures, 

will become the chief cynosure of popular regard. 

This is a great and pregnant innovation. Now, for the 



THE PECULIAR FEATURES OF THIS PLAN. 1 37 

most part, in all large constituencies at least, we vote for this 
man or that because we suppose him to represent certain 
measures or policies, as customarily set forth in the party plat- 
form. The prevailing idea is, that the opinion of the mass of 
voters should regulate politics. Accordingly, public men 
listen for " the voice of the people" to tell them how to decide 
the tariff question, the railroad question and the currency 
question. If they neglect to attend to this duty we " in- 
struct " them, by petitions, and in public meetings. The 
growing tendency to submit public measures of one sort and 
another to direct popular vote has the same signification. 

My scheme of politics means to change all this by removing 
the helm of great affairs beyond the immediate reach of popular 
opinion. It is expected that the Representative Elector, to 
whom is here intrusted the establishment of all high authority, 
will be chosen without much regard to specific measures, save 
when some such vital question as that between war and peace 
may come up. 

This object is not only incompatible with our present sys- 
tem of democratic construction, but, I am aware, is also 
in conflict with the current ideas and efforts of patriotism. 
" Principles, not Persons," is the customary boast of political 
conscientiousness. In accordance therewith the people are 
constantly urged to inform themselves on public questions. It 
is lately proposed to teach politics in the common schools, 
so as to make all our children — even the girls — wise in the 
business of the State ! — Nevertheless, the change that I intend 
accords with common sense, philosophy and all the lessons of 
the past. 

That the will of the majority is the logical and lasting basis 
of political power has already been claimed. It carries with it 
physical superiority, and may therefore fitly find expression on 
any issue that threatens resort to the final argument of force. 
Whatever its value as a guide to what is right, it will often set- 
tle what is expedient. Thus the plebiscites of Louis Napoleon, 
notwithstanding all their fraudulence, were peaceful allies of 
the eternal law of the strongest, fending off for a time the 
bloody contest of arms. Neither is it by any means denied 
that popular opinion, within the sphere of its capacity and 



138 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

opportunity, is a worthy guide. The average voter can tell 
well enough, for example, whether a new wagon-road ought to 
be opened between the east side of the town and the west, 
though his judgment cannot but be poor about the profitable- 
ness of bonding his farm to build a railroad to Boston or 
Chicago. So, the saying that " all men are wiser than any one 
man " is of incontestible truth whenever instinct, long experi- 
ence and wide observation hold dispute with the conceits of 
the individual brain ; — as when idiotic sanitarians say that it 
is unhealthy to eat pork, or for the farmer's barnyard not to be 
well sewered ; or when hygienic professors advise Dickens at 
fifty years of age to take a brisk walk of ten miles every morn- 
ing, hurrying him to his grave. So, too, the prime sentiments 
and doctrines of humanity and justice, of family, property, free- 
dom and equality, have their stoutest sanction and security in 
prevailing popular ideas. Neither will I deny that in the high- 
est political walks a certain vague public opinion about the 
state of the commonwealth still retains some virtuous force, 
notwithstanding its blindness and dispersion. 

What I claim, and what my system in this respect pro- 
ceeds on, is that ordinary intelligence is wholly unequal to the 
solution of the many nice questions that mostly occupy the 
attention of political society in civilized communities ; and 
that to submit them in any way to its determination is a griev- 
ous mistake. Look around among your neighbors and tell me 
how many of them have any good understanding of the polit- 
ical issues that are now presented ! The people, like children, 
know what they want, but they do not know what they need. 
Their incapacity was seen of old. " 111 fares it where the mul- 
titude have sway," said Homer and the Stagyrite. The virtues 
of direct popular rule, which is what voting on measures chiefly 
means, were tried out long ago in Greece and Rome. If those 
pure and master races in their numerous experiments of direct 
democracy did always fail, hardly can the mixed, inferior, and 
perhaps decaying populations of Brooklyn, Kansas, Mexico or 
France hope to succeed. To all but superior intelligence the 
issues of modern politics are not only dubious but unintel- 
ligible. They do not come within the purview of that IC com- 
mon sense of the people " to which Jefferson and the other 



THE PECULIAR FEATURES OF THIS PLAN. 1 39 

early apostles of American democracy so confidently trusted. 
The average voter can tell how his assessment grows, how 
much dearer his tobacco is in consequence of the federal excise, 
and whether his representative in Congress or the State legis- 
lature stands by his party and fills the show bill of the campaign, 
and about there his political appreciation stops. When you 
go beyond the limits of actual personal observation, stimu- 
lated by immediate interest, you leave the companionship of 
common minds. Any system of democratic construction that 
overlooks this truth must forever fail. 

If but one matter were in question, voting for measures 
might do ; but our politics constantly present a score of dis- 
putes, and the candidate who is with us on a part of them will 
be sure to disagree with us on the rest. To which of them 
shall we attend when we vote for " principles not men ?" 

In disregard of these incontestible truths our present system 
of elections in effect calls upon the people to vote on the vari- 
ous and difficult questions of finance and currency, modes of 
taxation, free trade, internal commerce, usury, Indian policy, 
minority representation, the construction of municipalities, the 
reconstruction of the South, pisciculture and San Domingo. 
Time is wanting to the busy people for the mastery of so 
many various topics. But, make life a leisure, and still aver- 
age intelligence would be as incompetent to the work as it is 
to predict an eclipse of the sun. 

This system, on the contrary, proceeds on the idea that 
large and difficult matters in politics ought some way to be 
submitted by the people at large to superior skill, just as we 
trust the lawyer, the doctor and the architect in matters with 
which we are unacquainted ourselves. But in large constituen- 
cies, as has been shown, the voter, of himself, can neither dis- 
cover nor empower such special skill ; and therefore he must 
needs hand over the business to commissioners, set to carry 
out no particular plan, but to put the general spirit of society 
into function. 

In a word, when the average member of any large constitu- 
ency has taken part in the choice of a Representative elector 
he has done all that he can advantageously do. It is " men, 
not measures " that I claim to be the key of democratic sue- 



140 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

cess. I mean to raise personal character, the Cinderella that 
now, neglected and forlorn, obeys unworthy sisters, to its 
rightful throne. 

Ideas are but an appendage of humanity. Measures are 
the work of men. Every government, at least for the current 
generation, is the rule of individuals far more than of doctrines 
or even of development. Personality is the prime factor in the 
career of society, whether in war or in peace, for conservation 
or for correction, in every virtuous and in every vicious field. 
There is no page of history that has not been made dark 
or bright by its impress, nor any passing crisis but what is 
concluded by its force, or, that failing, falls into the wheel of 
fortune. Whatever has been done worthy of memory in Judea, 
Greece, Rome or any modern nation, was done, not by general 
popular movement, but by the individual might of David, 
Pericles, Caesar, Charlemagne, Cromwell, Washington, Cobden, 
Cavour, Bismarck, Lincoln. In this sign, — not as standing on 
any platform of doctrines, but by the force of all behavior, — 
conquered Moses, Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, Mahomet, and 
whoever else, less exalted, in ancient or modern times, has 
helped to shape the destiny of mankind. Democracy can 
never thrive, nor do deeds worthy of itself, but must still 
grope and suffer, till it is guided by the light, and sub- 
mits to the rule, of superior minds. At the present mo- 
ment the success of governments throughout the world is 
pretty much in proportion to the prevalence of this element. 
Thus is explained why Russia is better governed than Mexico, 
Belgium than Pennsylvania, the silliest township than this great 
nation ; Boston, where character still maintains some linger- 
ing foothold in the political field, than Chicago, where it has 
hardly had time or chance to sprout ; the Blackfoot Indians, con- 
sidering all the circumstances, by their chiefs, than Manhattan 
Island by its aldermen. It is confirmatory matter of history 
that whenever the extension of political communities has 
overpassed the appreciation and sway of personal character, 
political disaster has constantly ensued. In the govern- 
ments of antiquity, in the free cities of Italy and Germany 
where modern democracy was swaddled, and in the free cities 
of the United States where, once so flourishing, it now seems 



THE PECULIAR FEATURES OF THIS PLAN. 141 

hastening to its fall, it was just so long as public function 
staid within the embracing reach of this native potentate 
that the public business prospered. Throughout our politics 
the public administration has decayed in correspondence with 
the wane of this influence ; nor is there any part of it on 
which enlightened patriotism can now look with any compo- 
sure save where that influence still lingers. It has not waned 
because we are insensible to it. Consider how popular admira- 
tion is stirred whenever a vigorous personal initiative is under- 
taken, either against Rings, for an idea, or, even, toward self- 
advancement ! Society instinctively demands leaders. Hero 
worship is the religion of democracy. Leave out the personal 
force and attraction of Clay, Webster, Van Buren, Calhoun, 
Benton, Wright, Seward, Douglas, and a few more such 
men, and you leave out the soul of our political story during 
the last half century. Nothing is so appreciable to human in- 
telligence as the strong visage of personal character. Of all 
the judgments of men, those are the most just that concern 
men. Here anthropomorphism does not delude. Seldom does 
the final moment leave in doubt, among those who have con- 
sorted with him, the understanding, the integrity or the temper 
of any man. The whisper of neighbors about the grave is an 
epitaph that never lies. 

But this estimate of men must be based, as already indi- 
cated, on the solid ground of actual acquaintance, through per- 
sonal intercourse or prevailing repute. It is this kind alone 
that is meant to be employed here, and this kind is undertaken 
to be made full use of. Under the present system of elections 
it has little opportunity, save in the narrowest fields. Outside 
of these, the average voter has nothing to guide him but the 
noise of the public press, which now is little but a trade or 
a tool, but which yet outweighs in political influence all 
legitimate opinion. 

I shall by no means deny that Americans sometimes elect 
to office men whose personal unworthiness ought to be well 
known to them ; but I lay this slip to the stress that Political 
Organization brings to bear upon our conduct. Practically, 
it most often leaves us but a choice between the equally un- 
fit candidates of two rival parties. In the cases where this 



142 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

is not the explanation it is the conceit of our own wisdom 
about measures that misleads, causing us to subordinate to that 
vain guide our far more trusty estimate of men. It is as the 
apostles of false seductive schemes of reform or progress prin- 
cipally that unworthy men sometimes get into political favor 
among their neighbors and acquaintances. 

However all this may be, one thing at least is certain ; viz : 
that the personal character of public men is absolutely the only 
safeguard of the public welfare. The past and the present 
alike proclaim that the spirit of the people, laws, constitutions, 
treaties, compacts, charters, bonds, investigations and penalties 
are a vain reliance. Only when legislators themselves are wise 
shall we have wise laws ; only when judges are just can there be 
righteous judgment ; only when the executive is vigorous will 
the government be strong. Especially absolute is the depend- 
ence of the commonwealth on the sort of men that manage 
affairs in large constituencies. Here the people of themselves 
have neither watch nor ward. There is no great public 
treasury that is not, despite all checks and guards of law, at 
the mercy of those who have it in charge ; nor any policy that 
may not be fatally misdirected, before the people, be they ever 
so wise and attentive, can rally to its rescue. 

Though this system intends to subordinate measures to men 
in democratic regard as a general rule, it is still expected that 
under it, whenever a worthy exigency shall arise, popular 
opinion will effectually assume the actual direction of affairs, 
reaching beyond its representative to the duties of that repre- 
sentative, and dictating, not only who shall make the laws, 
but what laws shall be made. By this I mean, that when such 
an issue as the right of secession from the Union, the annex- 
ation of Mexico,. or war against Spain shall arise, the Repre- 
sentative Delegates of the people under this system will be 
chosen on that issue, and, through the several grades of Elec- 
toral Colleges, will convey the purposes of the nation to the 
headquarters of the nation. But nice subordinate questions 
will no longer trouble the deliberations of the people. These, 
it is believed, will a thousand times better be submitted to the 
selected intelligence that this system undertakes to put in 
authority, than be pooled, as now, in a party platform, and 



THE PECULIAR FEATURES OF THIS PLAN. 143 

subjected to the scramble of interests, prejudices and enthusi- 
asms that characterizes our present politics. 

It has been objected to this feature of my system that it 
will not promote the " education " of the people in politics, but, 
rather, hinder it, by taking away its occasion and inducements. 
But it is impossible to hinder an impossibility. Political edu- 
cation of the mass of the people ! Talk about making every 
man a chemist or a theologian, but do not talk about this. Men 
who would not willingly trust a jury to determine a trifling law- 
suit confidently discourse about qualifying them by education 
for the right settlement of the innumerable difficult problems of 
modern politics ! This delusion had some excuse at the era of 
the French Revolution, while the political capacity of the peo- 
ple had as yet had no sufficient modern test, and while it was 
still undetermined what the new diffusion or opportunity of 
knowledge by the art of printing might do for them, but it has 
none now. For nigh a century politics has been the earnest 
study of the American people — as capable as any in the world — - 
but who will say that we have learned much ? Nothing can be 
more silly than to expect to qualify the average voter by educa- 
tion for passing on the many various issues that the politics of 
his city, his county, his State and the nation constantly present. 
This is a breadth of accomplishment that the most industrious 
and devoted genius is hardly capable of. How long will it take 
the mass of your neighbors to get " educated " in the science 
of political economy, criminal law, municipal construction, pau- 
perism, and no end of other such questions? Besides, what- 
ever political education we may get is of no use to us so long 
as the Caucus and Convention select our rulers. It is of no 
avail for the people of the State or City of New York to study 
the science of government while they are still destined to have 
aldermen and legislators who have not studied it. 

(/•) Office Tenure. 

A new rule of Office Tenure is also here proposed — simple, 
uniform, and alone democratic. The proper term of office for 
legislative, executive and judicial functionaries in their various 
grades has been more or less a subject of dispute throughout 
our history ; but without arrival at any uniformity of practice, 



144 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

or fixed conclusion of logic. One man is put in authority for 
one year, another for two, another for six, another for four- 
teen, another till three score years and ten, another for life, 
and another till his successor is appointed. So, some can be 
ousted for cause, and some without cause ; some by various 
ways of impeachment and trial, and some by mere party force, 
and so on. The State of New York, between its Council of 
Appointment under the constitution of 1777, at whose will held 
the great majority of public officers throughout the State, and 
the present various regulation of the matter, has tried forty dif- 
ferent terms of office, and as many ways of removal from office. 
Why should a Federal senator be elected for six years, and a 
State senator for two ? or a president for one period, a gov- 
ernor for another, and a mayor for a third ? Why should the 
various functionaries of a city hold office for different terms ? 
or why should the county judge be re-eligible, and not the 
county sheriff? At Washington policy has been repeatedly 
blocked because the President has one term of office, Senators 
another, and Representatives a third. The same in State 
capitols and city halls, all over the country. 

In place of this senseless and injurious hodge-podge, the 
mixed result of accident, old tradition and shallow device, 
I propose the single rule, that every public servant shall hold 
his place at the momentary will of the power that appoints him. 

That fixed terms of Office are now of some little service, 
as a check to the rotation that parties and politicians constant- 
ly demand, is by no means denied ; but it is contended that 
when these false influences shall be overthrown, as is under- 
taken to be done by this system of elections, even that meagre 
usefulness will be at an end. 

Let it be noticed, in illustration and support of this new rule, 
that it is the general custom in private business, and that the 
British ministry and every other successful cabinet in Europe 
holds office but from day to day. Ill, surely, in like instruction, 
would it have answered if the commanders of armies in our late 
war had been appointed for a term of years, or had been re- 
movable only by formal trial and conviction. 

No method but this can make democracy real. Now the 
people are sovereign only on election days, their supposed serv- 



THE PECULIAR FEATURES OF THIS PLAN. 1 45 

ants being their actual masters in the long interim between. 
But I make popular authority incessant. Time does not run 
against the king ; and, if the people are to be king, their 
authority must not be in abeyance for an hour. To get rid 
of an unworthy public functionary till his term expires is now 
slow and difficult, if not impossible ; but this rule of Office- 
Tenure furnishes an instant and perpetual court, where democ- 
racy will be at once complainant, judge and executioner. The 
people are not only entitled to the best service, but they have 
a right to be satisfied with it, and to a quick opportunity to 
correct their mistakes. The mere suspicion of dereliction 
from duty in the mind of the appointing power should war- 
rant the removal of any public officer. Let there be after- 
wards whatever inquiry, and punishment or restitution fair deal- 
ing may demand : but the general welfare should by no chance 
wait on the expiration of terms, the investigation of commit- 
tees or the slow judgment of courts. It should be " a word and 
a blow, and the blow first." Wrong to the individual is 
nothing : sains populi suprema lex. 

Note that the Representative Elector of whatever rank will 
himself be subject to the same insecurity of station. This 
cannot but hold him the stronger to his duty ; for, as to be 
chosen twice by his neighbors will raise him high in the scale 
of honor, so will it sink him low to have their confidence 
suddenly withdrawn. Hence encouragement to good, and great 
intimidation to evil motives in the discharge of his august and 
pregnant function. 

It need not be feared that this new law of Office-Tenure 
will hinder public station from being w r orthily filled. It will 
be a terror only to sloth, venality and incompetence. Patriot- 
ism, industry, capacity and honorable ambition will all the 
more eagerly seek employ in this the most important and 
distinguished of occupations, as having much more to hope 
than to fear from such a rule. 

As there will be here no technical restraint on removal from 
office, so will there be no artificial inducement towards it ; and 
the combined result cannot but be that, on the whole, Office- 
Tenure will be prolonged. Seldom, we may be certain, will 
the lot-drawn popular constituency call itself together anew to 
10 



146 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

change its Representative Elector without some urgent reason ; 
nor will any College of Electors hastily discharge its appoint- 
ees, to the discredit of its own judgment or motives. Neither 
when at defined periods new Colleges of Electors are chosen 
will they be likely to disturb the public service by wantonly 
introducing into it inexperienced and untested men. The same 
reasoning that promises that they will put good men into office 
guarantees that they will keep them there. 

An incidental advantage of this plan is, that when a public 
officer dies in the midst of his term, as have three of our presi- 
dents in this very generation, his function need not long de- 
volve upon a deputy, vice-president or lieutenant-governor who 
was never chosen to perform it, as it does now, sometimes to 
the serious disturbance of public counsels and popular quiet, 
but can in a moment be properly supplied at a new conven- 
ing of them that appointed him. 

Another is, that when every public functionary shall hold 
his place till his successor is appointed, according to the inten- 
tion here, the " ties " between parties, ambitions or interests 
that now sometimes leave important offices vacant will effect 
no interference with the function and career of democracy. 
k) This system involves a beneficial 

Concentration of Authority. 

Sovereignty in this country is now divided up, and its sev- 
eral parts are constantly at sixes and sevens. As held Cal- 
houn, and, I think, Jefferson before him, the federal constitu- 
tion fixes no supremacy of command among the different de- 
partments of government. It is the like in States and cities. 
All about the judge enjoins the executive, the executive 
thwarts the legislature, and the legislature ignores them both ; 
and so on round the other way. Thus democratic authority 
has no head, and member wars against member. But under 
this system the Colleges of the people's Representatives will 
have absolute control over every department of the public 
service. Thus many of the internecine contests between po- 
litical interests that have so constantly marred the history 
of governments, free or attempting to be free, will surely be 
escaped. 






THE PECULIAR FEATURES OF THIS PLAN. 147 

(/.) Official Responsibility. 

These features of my system carry with them an altered 
shape of Official Responsibility. They give it (1) a needed 
singleness, (2) a better direction and (3) a new sanction. 

(1.) As our government is now constituted a public man 
often is responsible to the President who nominates him, to the 
Senate that must confirm him, to the House of Representatives 
which can impeach him, and to party, Political Organization 
and popular opinion besides. But under this system every 
high functionary will be responsible, immediately and only, 
to a College of Electors. 

(2.) This new direction of Official Responsibility may look 
alarming, as doing away in some degree with that popular 
oversight of the public service that it is traditional and cus- 
tomary to regard as the main security of democratic rule : but 
the fact is, that in so largely discarding that guardianship 
I but strike out a thing that is mythical, unsuited or worn 
out. Certain it is, that in any large constituency there is not 
and cannot be, even if there ought, any effective Respon- 
sibility of public men to the mass of the voting population. 
It is not to these that they really owe their elevation now, or 
must look for support or advancement, but to themselves, to 
party, to the league of Politicians, and to the influence of special 
interests. Not to repeat my discussion of the other points, 
it is notorious that public place is now far more dependent on 
those narrow interests and purposes that have the advantage 
of concentration and organization than on general diffused sen- 
timent and concern. To this advantage is it due that labor 
unions and granges, turn and turn about with railroads, banks, 
and other corporations, have largely had the mastery of affairs 
for the last thirty years ; — as when, to illustrate the argument 
by a single example, a master stevedore or manufacturer who 
can bring a score of his employees to the caucus or the polls 
makes the alderman of his ward to do what he likes. Seldom 
does the legislator care much what the mass of his constituents 
think about his course. Sometimes, to be sure, he goes through 
the form of making report to them by a public speech or letter 
when he comes home from Washington or Albany, but he 



148 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

never forgets that his final audit is at the counter of Poli- 
ticians. 

A good deal is prated about the power of public opinion, 
and the responsibility of government to it, and what it is going 
to do with politicians if they don't look out ; but the fact is 
that public opinion is about as impotent in New York as it 
is in St. Petersburg, and guides the administration of Hayes 
almost as little as that of the Khedive. Public opinion in the 
long run no doubt has a certain influence on the conduct of 
affairs, as a kind of cosmic element, but in the calculations 
of the present hour it might about as well be left out in this 
country. It is the tool, and not the master in our politics. 

Suppose a public man to acknowledge his responsibility to 
public opinion, and to desire to obey it ; how will he find out 
what it is? It has now no voice of its own. Surely he cannot 
learn its purposes from the public prints ; for these, when not 
the mere organs of party or the advertisement of politicians, 
are but a gain-seeking proprietorship, no more speaking for 
democracy than the Church Journal, the Freeman's Journal, 
the Independent, or the Methodist represents the genius of 
catholic Christianity. As little can he discover it in the pro- 
ceedings of popular assemblies, whether collected by politics 
or benevolence, in the interests of laborers or of tax-payers, 
of the producer or the consumer, of the whiskey dealer or the 
drunkard's wife ; for such demonstrations are always partial, 
usually artificial, and often mercenary. Always, moreover, it 
is the shifting and surface elements in public opinion that are 
most conspicuous ; and he who follows no better guide will 
surely imperil what he has in charge, — as when one, navigat- 
ing the rapids of the St. Lawrence, watches its tumbling eddies, 
but sees not the direction of the main stream, wrecking his ship. 
But under this system public opinion will be readily found, 
as collected from its present vagueness and dispersion and 
centered in the Colleges of Representative Electors. Add, that 
the intelligence and virtue above the common which these Col- 
leges may fairly be expected to possess, and which can but rise 
with their rising grades, will make accountability to them far 
more welcome to every worthy public functionary than depend- 
ence on popular ignorance, prejudice and caprice. 



THE PECULIAR FEATURES OF THIS PLAN. 1 49 

(3.) Finally, Responsibility looks toward authority, and 
authority is nothing without sanctions. Human nature feels 
accountable only to him who has the power to reward or to 
punish. Little sanction of either sort have the purposes of de- 
mocracy now. To be sure we can vote for any man we please ; 
but to do this, unless he is first nominated by the politicians of 
the party Caucus and Convention is to waste our vote. As to 
punishment for official misconduct of its various sorts by 
removal from office, fines, imprisonment and so forth, our 
power is even more shadowy and scant. Who ever knew an 
official head to fall into the basket because the people de- 
manded it ? 

But by its peculiar law of Office-Tenure this system bestows 
on us the instant power not only to create but to destroy ; to 
honor and reward, or to punish and disgrace. Here, surely, is 
a sanction that will make the public service responsive to the 
public will. 

(m.) A new Centre of Responsibility. 

Moreover, not only is the office-holder now responsible to 
nobody in particular but nobody is responsible for him. He 
is a sort of filius nullius. Whenever, in his misbehavior, the 
question of paternity comes up, politicians hide behind party, 
party behind politicians, and the people behind both, each 
accusing the others. Nor shall I deny that each of them has 
some reason to refuse responsibility for him. But, under this 
system, whenever the wrong man gets into power, it will be 
easy to know in every form and stage of democratic authority 
who is to blame. In all the larger areas of political life the 
RepresentativeElector alone will have to answer for the con- 
duct of the public functionaries. Omnipotent as he clearly 
will be within his sphere, he will have no subterfuge from full 
Responsibility. 

Surely the higher public service under these conditions 
will be permeated by a sterner sense of accountableness than 
has yet pervaded government in any age or country, — to its 
great purification and advancement beyond a doubt. 

This strong settlement of Responsibility will by no means 
involve democracy in subjugation to seated office. From the 



I50 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

lot-drawn Caucus of the people up to the highest grade of 
the Electoral Convention and down through every depart- 
ment of political administration, public opinion, however vary- 
ing, will still maintain a sure supremacy; for the Colleges of 
Electors will not only be chosen afresh at defined periods, but 
will all the while be liable to renovation at the will of their 
constituencies. 

■(#.) The Representative Elector a Watchman. 

This attitude of the Elector will devolve upon him a duty 
of great significance, now unassigned. It will belong specifically 
to him, as it did to the Roman Consul, to take care " lest the 
republic should suffer harm." At present this is nobody's 
business in particular ; and, by consequence, nobody attends 
to it much. 

(o.) The Colleges of Representative Electors a Balance wheel 
of Political Movement. 

Our present system, whether in its two houses of legislation, 
its veto power, its tripartite distribution of political function 
among the makers, the judges and the executors of the law, or 
anywhere else, furnishes no true regulator of democratic ca- 
reer. Despite these devices the wheels of political movement 
roll sometimes too fast, and sometimes too slow, sometimes 
backward and sometimes forward, nor follow any settled track. 
This defect, it is believed, is here supplied by the authoritative 
station of the Representative Elector. To him, a fair and 
full representative of social interest, sentiment and influence, 
reform can confidently address its claims for due advancement, 
and conservation for just protection. While prevalent opinion 
will be fully accommodated, and all proper flexibility of laws 
and institutions ensured, this removed authority will stand 
like a rock against wanton and hasty change. 

(p.) This System of Elections Simple. 

Finally, this method of democracy is supremely simple. 
Fairly to compare it in this respect with what we now live 
under, we must remember that the latter virtually comprises 
not only all the variety of election proceedings and methods of 



THE PECULIAR FEATURES OF THIS PLAN. 151 

appointment that are known to the Constitution and the statute 
book, but also the preliminary work of the Caucus and Con- 
vention, and of all the rest of the machinery and methods of 
Political Organization. 

Tiers Etat. 

It was well remarked by Dugald Stewart in his life of Adam 
Smith, when defending the claims of that philosopher to origi- 
nality, that u in proportion as any conclusion approaches the 
truth the number of previous approximations to it may reason- 
ably be expected to be multiplied." Accordingly, the history of 
government, from the various ingenuities of Greece and Venice 
to the latest constitutions of France, Roumania and Brazil, 
abounds in approximations to this system. To recount any 
considerable share of them would be a tedious task. But there 
is one that comprises so many of the features of my plan as to 
deserve especial notice ; — the more, because it was approved 
by its works, and thus furnishes for the scheme to some extent 
the argument of actual success. 

The best display, beyond a doubt, that political society 
in its larger spheres has ever made was in the Third Estate 
of France, which assembled at Versailles on the first of March, 
1789, and which, the Estates of the nobility and clergy refusing 
co-operation, became the celebrated national assembly. Says 
Alison, who was a most unwilling witness to any virtue or suc- 
cess of democracy : " Among its members it numbered a great 
proportion of the talent and almost all the energy of France." 
All the testimony of observers, together with the verdict of 
subsequent inquiry, is to the same effect. 

But its recorded works are its sufficient eulogy. It does 
not belong here to discuss the inexhaustible theme of the 
French Revolution, but I fear no contradiction when I say 
that for patriotism, purity, understanding, moderation, mag- 
nanimity, and every other virtue that should characterize public 
bodies the French Constituent Assembly of J 789 is entitled to 
the palm. It was foremost in its temper, foremost in its pru- 
dence, and foremost in its success. Remember its provocations, 
remember the chaos and difficulty of the times, remember the 
old oppressions that it broke up, and the liberty, equality and 



152 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

fraternity that it inaugurated, and tell me who has done better, 
or who has done so well. It made but two material mistakes : 
the first in forbidding to its members a second candidacy, and 
the other in utterly changing for its successor the manner of 
its own election. But for these two errors, and especially the 
last, the horrid and disastrous scenes that are apt to be alone 
associated by ignorant people with the French Revolution, 
would never have happened. 

When we consider how suddenly this body was called 
together, and how well they discharged their arduous and 
unaccustomed task ; when we compare their solid discourse, 
as preserved in the chronicles of the times, with the vapidity 
that spreads through legislative halls in general ; and when we 
remember that what they did and said is still the study, the 
example and the inspiration of popular endeavor all over Eu- 
rope, we may well inquire how it was that such a prodigy was 
brought into existence. How came it that a people, utterly 
inexperienced for more than two centuries in political function, 
should choose, at the first attempt, the best men among them 
for their political representatives ? The answer is, that the 
members of the Third Estate were elected substantially after the 
manner here proposed for all high functionaries : that is, not by 
the people themselves, nor by their immediate representatives, 
but by the representatives of those representatives. 

This fact, so full of instruction, is omitted or slurred over 
by Alison, Thiers, and all the other formal historians that 
I have access to, but it is clearly indicated by Carlyle in the 
first chapter of the fourth book of his French Revolution, 
and is fully described by Messrs. Erckmann-Chatrian, in " The 
Story of a Peasant," (Vol. I, p. 135, et seq., Beeton's Library 
Edition,) where will be found the very proclamation of the king 
that called this body together and ordered the manner of its elec- 
tion. The document is too long to be transcribed here, and in 
some particulars its meaning, as translated, is somewhat ob- 
scure ; but this much pertinent to my purpose can be clearly 
gathered from it, viz.: (1) That the voters of each parish and 
community were to meet at the " guild hall" and elect deputies 
who should constitute " the assembly of the third estate " of the 
town : (2) that this body should appoint deputies, at the rate 



THE PECULIAR FEATURES OF THIS PLAN. 1 53 

of" one for every hundred houses," to represent it at the con- 
vention of the "principal bailiwick;" which, in turn, (3) was to 
send a fourth part of its number to " represent it at Paris." 

Commenting on that compound system of representation, 
and seasoning entertainment with instruction, as is their wont, 
these charming authors remark that " it will be observed that 
instead of naming, as we do now, deputies of whom we knew 
nothing # # ^ we chose, as was sensible, from one's own 
village. ^ ^ # Those persons then selected the most 
sensible, the most able, the boldest and best educated to sus- 
tain our appeals to the king, the princes, the nobles and the 
bishops. In this fashion we had what was good. Look at 
what our deputies did in '89, and what these do to-day; then 
you will see whether it was better to have folks who were 
chosen because they were known, or men whom you elect 
because the prefect recommends them to you." Substitute in 
the last sentence " politician" for " prefect," et de te fabala nar- 
ratur. On a subsequent page these writers, as if to anticipate 
another feature of this system, advise that electors should have 
it in their power instantly to deprive of his seat every deputy 
who might prove false to his trust. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THIS SYSTEM THE TRUE SCIENCE OF POLITICAL SOCIETY. 

THUS this system pretends to do little more than to gather 
and employ the scattered members of ancient political 
truth. But it is claimed for it, not only that its several parts 
are sound, but that their combination is philosophical. If that 
be so, a thousand analogies will confirm its methods, and its 
use will be attended, not by stray and transient advantages 
merely, but by a perpetual accompaniment of beneficence. To 
survey it a moment in this broad regard may help to strengthen 
the basis of particular deduction. 

(i) // makes Actual the rule of The People. 

That democracy is the government which nature designs 
can hardly be doubted. Without speculative argumentation, 
it is sufficient to remember that throughout history it has been 
in point of fact the general instinctive endeavor of all the no- 
bler races, and, especially, that in the supreme Caucasian 
family the current toward it has constantly gathered strength 
in a marked degree ever since the art of printing arrived to 
inform and aid the common mind. If modern civilization be 
anything but a phantom it surely carries universal democracy 
within its womb. Even through the dirt-beclouded scarf-skin 
of present American politics may still be discerned the native 
loveliness of popular sovereignty. The principle of democ- 
racy is like that royal tree which, though wrenched and bruised 
in many storms, still holds a steadfast root and lifts its branch- 
ing plumes above all rivalry. To me all the sap of nature 
seems ready to rush to its trunk whenever its swelling virtues 
shall be free to unfold themselves. 

But democracy does not mean merely the equality of men 
in political rights before the law, but their actual political em- 
powerment also. Our present system, like many others, 



THE TRUE SCIENCE OF POLITICAL SOCIETY. 1 55 

writes in the statute book that the will of the people is sover- 
eign ; but the actual fact is, that thus far in the history of the 
world no lasting command over their own affairs has ever been 
anywhere achieved by any large community. Often falling to 
them by chance, or seized upon by instinct, power has always 
been loosely held by them, and has soon slipped from their 
grasp into the hands of more concentrated and watchful talents. 
This happened repeatedly in Greece and Rome ; it has hap- 
pened more than once to France within a century ; it has 
happened to nigh all the other nations of Europe since present 
memory; and it is fast happening to us, although we seem not 
to know it. 

But under this system the people will not fail to hold their 
grip on the substance of authority. Let critics tell, if they are 
able, what defective point there is in the armor here provided 
for the public will where violence can break through, or fraud 
insinuate itself. If the people rule not well, they will at least 
rule. 

(2) A due Subordination in Political Society is here 
Established. 

But, supremely democratic as this system is, its limitation of 
direct popular function in all the wider spheres of government 
to the choice of a Representative Elector, in whose preferred in- 
tegrity and wisdom all farther authority is reposed, brings in 
also the everlasting principle of Subordination. " Order is Heav- 
en's first law ;" and there is no order without subordination. 
Without it there is mutiny in armies, piracy on ship board and 
hell in families ; and without it, equally, there is eternal war- 
fare in political society. Deprived of this, democracy must 
forever imitate that derisive statue of it that Phidias cut, — a 
plenty of arms and legs, but no head. 

It is one of the principal defects of our present system 
that it fails to make due account of the actual difference 
among men. It seems to intend, what never can and should 
not be, the equal rule of unequals. Democracy can never flour- 
ish on the mere enumeration of polls. The level that that 
would bring us to is a dead level. It must somehow contrive 
to measure its constituent members as well as count them. 



156 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

This is believed to be effected by the method of establishing 
authority that is here proposed. 

Only to him who thinks one man as good as another will 
this seem a disadvantageous change : but let such prig of 
philanthropy remember that, if he claims to be as good as any- 
body else, he must also confess to being as bad. The sentiment 
of the rightful equality of all men in political power is at best 
but a mixture of stupid self-conceit and blear-eyed sympathy. 
In the lack of any right guidance of public opinion it has of 
late been peculiarly effusive in this country. But a reaction 
has begun, and every thinking man would now be glad to see 
an honest mastery established, even though he himself should 
turn out to be a subject. Surely no believer in popular sove- 
reignty can complam of a supremacy that the mass of the peo- 
ple are equally free to establish and to cast down, as they will 
be that of my Colleges of Representative Electors. 

This law of Subordination, as belongs to its native virtu- 
ousness, was the first to raise its head in the organization of 
political society. " A person or set of persons," says Walter 
Bagehot, " must first be had to defer to, though who he is, by 
comparison, hardly signifies." Its import never ceases. Says 
Carlyle in this sense, with his usual pointedness of expression : 
" The ultimate question is : ' Can I kill you or can you kill me ?' " 
To substitute peaceful adjustment for such severe criterion is 
the constant and still unsolved problem of civilization. It is 
expected to be accomplished here by the logical and system- 
atic empowerment of the mightier — whether in wit, muscle or 
fortune — and the consequent quiet submission of the weaker 
elements in political society. The method is in accord with 
the primeval law of natural selection, alike in interests, ideas 
and persons, and is therefore a true ally of stability, peace and 
progress. Based on the eternal doctrine of equal rights, and 
yet giving free scope to every new influence, it will both 
establish what is strong in the present, and give quick an- 
nouncement to every change in rightful power that time shall 
give birth to. 

In point of fact, every government, in its inner knot, neces- 
sarily employs this principle. It is as impossible for political 
society to get along as a mere cooperation of equals as for a 



THE TRUE SCIENCE OF POLITICAL SOCIETY. 1 57 

machine shop or a store. Moreover, it is as natural and necessary 
for the mass of men to be virtual subjects in politics as it is to 
be pupils and imitators in art, science, fashion and religion. 
The organization of an army is the oldest, and perhaps the 
final model, in no narrow sense, of regulated government. 
The most successful nationalities of our period are impregnate 
with this doctrine. In Great Britain every important move- 
ment, both in legislation and in administration, for conserva- 
tion or reform, obeys a narrow Cabinet, if not the Prime Min- 
ister alone. So in Germany, Belgium, and Scandinavia. It 
is largely because neither the city, the State nor the nation 
has here a head that our democracy so straddles about and 
vainly swings its arms. 

This law of Subordination, it is worthy of remark, is espe- 
cially useful to the commonalty. Nature's magnates will always 
be able to take care of themselves, however government may 
be constituted, but the mass of men constantly need the pro- 
tection, guidance and rule of superior intelligence and energy. 
At bottom the domestic brute is hardly more dependent on 
the interested care of a superior species. Accordingly, it is a 
familiar fact that nowhere else are the lower sort of folks so 
prosperous as when they stay long in the employ of extraor- 
dinary intelligence and force. 

In contradiction to all this, our present system of elections 
makes the wise man theoretically, and most often in fact, of 
no more weight in the determination of affairs than the foolish 
man, the solid and reputable citizen than the pauper or the 
loafer, the constable than the thief, a Washington than the 
meanest man that crawls. Had our present plan of government 
no other defect, it could beget naught else but degraded policy 
and disordered career. Democracy can never do deeds worthy 
of itself until it is furnished a better guidance than the low 
understanding and vacillating will of the masses, which, under 
the existing system,, are its lawful directors. 

Our present volunteer party organizations, vicious as they 
are, do something toward the correction of this defect in the law. 
It is better far to trust the officering and polity of the state 
to the average convention of politicians, bad as they are, 
than to any mass meeting of the people at large, or to organized 



158 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED 

grangerdom or labor unions. I undertake to make that cor- 
rection complete and compulsory by putting the immediate 
establishment of all high authority into the hands of a selected 
few, presumably qualified, if my argument has been sound, for 
such exalted function. Leadership, somehow arrived at, politi- 
cal society must have. Shall it still be the acquisition of con- 
spiring self-seekers, as it is here now, or shall it be the bestowal 
of the people ? This is the practical question between our 
existing system of government and that which is here pro- 
posed. 

(c.) Democracy, Oligarchy and Despotism Here Combined. 

This system collects together the special merits of Mon- 
archy, Aristocracy and Republicanism, each of which principles 
of government, by credit of its antiquity and still continuing 
force, has surely good claim to consideration. To each of 
them certain particular virtues have been customarily ascribed. 
As summarized by Montesquieu, to the first belongs vigor, to 
the second intelligence, and to the last purity of purpose. The 
might of kings and the wisdom of princes have passed into 
proverb, nor will any but the pessimist or the misanthrope deny 
the general good intentions of the people. For this assignment 
of merit there is certainly this much of foundation, that gov- 
ernment to be powerful must be concentered, to be wise must 
employ the superior talents of the few, and to be just must 
make the general welfare its cynosure, — which last democracy 
alone can be expected to do. Each of these political forms has 
its acknowledged vices also. The monarch, owning no responsi- 
bility or restraint, becomes an oppressor; in aristocracies flourish 
dark intrigue and cruel pride ; while the popular mind tends to 
fanaticism, contention and discontent. Left to itself, each of 
these principles has shown far more of its vicious than its virtu- 
ous side. To correct the mischievous tendency of one by the 
companionship of the rest has from time immemorial been the 
study of philosophy and patriotism. " That is the best consti- 
tuted government," says Cicero, " which is composed of the 
three original elements, the royal, the aristocratic, and the dem- 
ocratic." Says Tacitus : " all nations must be governed either by 
the people, the first men, or a single ruler : " adding that, " a form 



THE TRUE SCIENCE OF POLITICAL SOCIETY. 1 59 

of government constituted of these three, it is easier to admire 
than to believe possible." Every student of political history 
is compelled to admit the native force of each of these elements ; 
nor can he either hope or wish to stint it of its due prerogative. 
But, thus far, no other than fortuitous or illogical mixtures 
of them have been arrived at. Whenever they have been 
brought together, they have stood on no common basis, have 
been diversely inspired, and, consequently, have lived in con- 
stant antagonism. 

This ancient problem is here solved, and this vital need 
supplied. No virtue of the common people will be sacrificed, 
superior talent will have all possible recognition and opportu- 
nity, and the dominion of the state will be single, quick and 
absolute. Liberty will go hand in hand with law, and power 
with knowledge. The people will both ruie and obey ; and the 
genius which has heretofore so often used them as tools will 
itself become their honored engine. 

(d.) The seeming Complexity, and the Moderation of this System 

are of Nature. 

A thousand analogies guarantee the virtue of this mixed and 
graduated method of political construction. It is that repeated 
sifting which separates minutely the greater from the less, or like 
those successive distillations which gradually collect the pure 
from the impure. It is the multiplication of social purpose into 
itself. It is such purification and metamorphosis of the raw 
material of humanity as alone can bring its hidden virtues into 
light and use. Never are nature's staples — the floss of cotton, 
the ores of iron or the juices of the cane — of any worth till 
they have been cleansed, corrected and condensed. This is 
what this system does for crude democratic will. It does more : 
it constantly tests and modifies its outcome by the intermix- 
ture and reagency of picked intelligence. Hence may results 
unknown before, and nigh incredible, be safely expected. For 
though the thoughts and aspirations of the mass of mankind 
are far removed from the high duties and difficult interests of 
wide political society, they embody, nevertheless, the elements 
out of which a vital chemistry can form the richest fruits : — 
so does Behemoth on the banks of Nile educe from reedy 



l60 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

crudeness in slow digestion his sinewy virtues ; so from the 
leaching of an acrid and limy soil flow the sweet products of 
the joyful vine ; so does the oak, feeding upon the cold and 
naked juices of the ground, gather therefrom, as they course 
through its knotted joints, those virtuous combinations that 
at length beget alike the iron strength that braces its arms and 
the tufted beauty that crowns its top. 

Moreover, the hindrance and delay to which I here subject 
popular movement is in strict conformity to natural laws. No- 
where, in her favorable moods, does nature work by sudden 
onset or quick construction. Where she does best she moves 
slowest. Not hot beds nor volcanoes, but the slow warmth of 
the approaching sun, figure her beneficence. That moderation 
is imitated here. 

When our political life shall be regulated after this manner 
that is here proposed, it will imitate those fair rivers which of 
yore among the Alleghanies gathered their waters from the 
filtering bosoms of primeval forests, and poured them along 
with steady flow, as pure as Arethusa's fountains, refreshing and 
fertilizing all around throughout their destined course. But 
how are these streams now changed ! The steadying influence 
that nature had devised among her tangled symmetry of trees 
and ferns, her heaped up leaves and rush-grown intervales, 
has been torn away by ruthless art, and flood and drouth alter- 
nate. Destructive violence follows muddy stagnation, and na- 
ture is at war with herself. Meantime, from all sides are poured 
into these once pure and healthful currents the poisonous and 
staining refuse of a thousand chemic arts, mixed with the sew- 
age and souring waste of pent-up populations. 

How like to these are the phenomena of our present politi- 
cal life ! A false system of elections, prompting the gainful 
industry of politicians, has taken from democratic will all 
natural behavior. From time to time, driven by party stress 
or sudden impulse, it rushes with headlong and destructive 
vehemence along a shifting channel, and stagnates when the 
flood is spent. Meanwhile its course is thick-bordered with 
the structures of unscrupulous political self-seeking, whence 
are poured into it from all sides the turbid waters of public 
corruption. If we would mend this, we must invoke nature's 



THE TRUE SCIENCE OF POLITICAL SOCIETY. l6l 

guidance, and imitate her processes. The purposes of the people 
must be held back and steadied in their course, until at length, 
unstirred and undirtied by the delving of the politician, they 
shall grow to the proportions of enlightened public opinion, and 
strongly mingle with the tides of time. 

(e.) Every Political Potency will here be duly Represented. 

In this construction of political society every native influ- 
ence will have full scope, will be weighed in a just balance, and 
will take its lawful place. Nothing human will be foreign here, 
either in the consultation of the people, or the selected Colleges 
of Electors ; and the result can but accord with the wide eternal 
fitness of things. Society is naturally shaped and moved by a 
great variety of forces, — by numbers and character, muscle and 
money, possession and expectation, prestige, audacity, and toil, 
selfishness, sympathy, intelligence, emotion, learning, instinct — 
and whatever other power or quality resides in human kind. 
That system of government alone which gives effect to all 
these falls in with nature's plan. The political methods of the 
past have used some salient element or elements among them 
only, like the canvas of Rembrandt, — now making personality 
darken every other feature, as in tyrannies ; now inheritance, 
and now brute numbers ; sometimes occupation, as in old Egypt ; 
caste, as in India ; money, as in the municipal constructions of 
mediaeval Europe ; superstition, as in Jewry and Utah ; or lit- 
erary skill, as in China. Like the partial depictions of that 
artist, too, these methods may produce some startling results, 
but nothing that fills the measure of nature. 

No single force can ever successfully manage society. As 
says Lord Bacon : " When any of the four pillars of government 
are mainly shaken," (which according to him are religion, jus- 
tice, counsel, and treasure), "men had need pray for fair weath- 
er." The combination of many potencies is the secret of political 
success — as from the mixture of various metals came the resist- 
ing armor and conquering weapons of ancient war. It was well 
said, that, had Comte succeeded in making philosophy our wor- 
ship, he would have been burnt at the stake by his own priest- 
hood. He saw not that the intellectual, the emotional and the 
physical are a trinity of social power, whose disunion must 
11 



l62 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

ever breed commotion, conflict and disaster, but whose full 
harmonious conjunction and cooperation promise untold benefi- 
cence. The history of nations tells us in a thousand catastro- 
phes that it is hazardous to scant of due regard any of nature's 
various forces in the construction of political society. How of- 
ten,watching too closely some single supposed celestial guide, — 
right, law, reason, philanthropy or religion, — has high purpose 
been wrecked upon the rough environment of mixed humanity ! 

It is the chief excellence of the British constitution that it 
employs a greater number of the native elements of political 
strength than any other ever has. Hamilton predicted, with 
the deep insight of genius, that our present system, based as it 
is chiefly on a mere count of voices, to the neglect of character, 
talent and property, could never succeed. 

Not only will all the various elements of political power be 
assembled and employed here, but they will also be put in proper 
adjustment. The right adjustment of energies is always neces- 
sary to their beneficence. Not till the touch of the loadstone, 
as philosophers tell us, has brought its particles into due polar 
arrangement, does the martial metal obey celestial influences, 
and become the safe guide of the wanderer. The common 
systems of government seem almost designed to favor the di- 
vergence and combat of nature's forces, rather than their har- 
monious cooperation : at least, they have effected but a me- 
chanical mixture of them, or the casual coherence of propinquity, 
habit and prejudice. But here, it is believed, a better law will 
obtain. Discord, wasting collision and profitless turmoil will 
be avoided, or reduced to a minimum. All the elements of 
social force will be set in harmonious relation to each other, 
and each will assert its just prerogative, and bear its proper 
part in the settlement of political authority and career. — For, 
when persons shall have free opportunity, all the potencies that 
cling about them, — station, faculty or possession, pregnant of 
every minor thing, — will each discharge its proper function. 

By these means it cannot but be reached, in the end, that 
the higher representatives of democracy here provided for will 
give shape, voice and effect to numerous exalted purposes of 
society that now lie disintegrated, expressionless and impotent. 
Great things, surely, may be expected from this just combina- 



THE TRUE SCIENCE OF POLITICAL SOCIETY. 1 63 

tion of all the forces of the public will. The deeds of democ- 
racy, it is true, can never surpass the spirit of democracy : but 
it is believed that the major sentiments of mankind are good. 
These will be gathered and crystallized here, while all inferior 
opposing forces will remain incoherent and sedimentary. 

(/.) Increased Influence of Personal Character and Property. 

In this fair contest two social potencies, it is believed, will 
be certain to find augmented influence. In the first place, per- 
sonal character will be raised to its native throne. Of all forces 
high character is of least account in our present politics. It is 
in fact rejected by Political Organization as dangerous, or at 
least useless : and it repudiates politics in turn, as unrewardful, 
unbecoming and noisome. Consider how seldom your most 
esteemed neighbors and acquaintances arrive at public station, 
or seek it ; and how few of them frequent the party caucus and 
convention, or do more at the polls than drop a silent vote ! 
On the other hand, how characterless are the bulk of them that 
administer our affairs ! But under this system the influences 
that bring about this sorry state will lose their sinister advan- 
tage. Both in the conference of the people where I cradle de- 
mocracy, and in the Colleges of Electors where it confronts 
exalted public requirements, this chief stamp of worth will 
have increased opportunity, recognition and advancement. 

To this not many will object : but the augmented influence 
of the property of the country, which is equally certain to ensue, 
will be apt to be less generally welcome. That that influence is 
now very small, the taxpayers of New York or any other city, or 
indeed of the country in general, will not ask to have argued. 
But the evil effects of the " spoils " doctrine, the growth of brib- 
ery at the polls and in every department of the public business, 
and the unlawful control that organized capital sometimes exer- 
cises over legislatures and common councils, have made public 
opinion distrustful of the money power as an element in politics. 
But all these are in fact but perversions of a native and benefi- 
cent influence, and are due to the falseness of our present meth- 
ods of political construction. Nor is it really the hand of prop- 
erty that has there been seen. The real capital of the country 
meddles little with politics. It was not the moneyed men of 



164 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

New Hampshire that decided there the important election of 
March, 1876 ; it was the purse of office, longer than the purse 
of opposition. It was not those who owned the Erie Railroad 
that so often debauched Albany and the courts, but the ad- 
venturers who wanted to own it, or at least to enjoy the profits 
of its use. Say what you will about the power of money, the 
cheapest dog that gets into the legislature can hurt Vanderbilt 
a thousand times more than Vanderbilt can hurt him ; and they 
both know it. 

Philosophically viewed, property is entitled to great weight 
in political affairs. It is not humanity alone that is valuable 
to humanity. No reasonable man would destroy railroads be- 
cause of railroad slaughters, or shut up the wells of the Alle- 
ghanies because women and children are sometimes burned to 
death by kerosene. Politics is society taking care of society ; 
and, logically, it regards the individual only as a member of the 
body politic. Every man is of infinite value to himself, but 
he is of no value to the commonwealth except as he profits 
it. He who consumes all that he earns is of no use to the 
community, and can therefore make no demand on political 
prudence ; much less can he who consumes more than he earns. 
The fertile farm is of more value to society, and therefore should 
be of more consideration in philosophic politics, than the 
thriftless farmer, and the toiling mule than the vagabond ass 
who rides it. 

Moreover, the science of government deals with long pe- 
riods. Political society means the continuous embodiment 
and empowerment of common concerns generation after gene- 
ration. Among these the material accumulations of the past 
are of no secondary account. They are an essential condition 
and chief help of human progress. Whoever would despoil 
property of great influence in human affairs would lead us fast 
back toward barbarism. Each generation inherits far more than 
it earns. What are the labors of to-day upon the land com- 
pared with the subjugation of wildernesses that our fathers 
have slowly wrought for us ? Far better were it for the family 
of man that this generation were stricken out than that it 
should fail to pass to the next the material capital that it is 
heir to. 



THE TRUE SCIENCE OF POLITICAL SOCIETY. 1 65 

Philosophy can take a still deeper view. The law of the 
correlation and conservation of forces joins spiritual and mate- 
rial values in a profound identity. Soul and substance inter- 
migrate. Clinton still lives in his canals, and Morse will not 
be dumb in death while continents endure to echo back and 
forth the voice of his invention. 

Besides — to descend to meaner arguments — nothing else so 
holds a man to the considerate and earnest discharge of his po- 
litical duties as to have a material stake in the country. The 
most concern that the majority have, or think they have, in 
government, is in what they have to pay for its support. The 
success of the British government has been due in no small 
part to the fact that property and political power have there 
commonly resided in the same hands. So, the general diffusion 
of property interests in this country is all that has kept the 
republic to any anchorage. 

Do what we may, money will always have great influence 
in politics. Over half the civilized world, monarchies, aristoc- 
racies and republics rise and fall at the command of capital. In 
our own case money is at bottom the master of the Caucus and 
Convention, which are our masters. There is no power in fleet- 
ing idea or ephemeral personality to put down its long knitted 
strength. Self-preservation makes it pugnacious : if labor would 
maim it, it kicks labor in the belly ; if office attack it, it un- 
seats office ; if the law be unfriendly, it can buy out the law. 

My system will not fail to set this native potentate in its 
lawful seat. This is guaranteed in the Conference of the peo- 
ple, where I inaugurate political authority, by the dependence 
of employment and various other business interests on capital, 
by the respect that the possession of houses, farms and bonds 
will always command, and, on the other side, by the confidence 
of power that money gives. And whatever potency property 
may have in that popular field will surely remain in the College 
of Electors, to which station I advance entire every element of 
social force. 

(g.) A True Organization of Political Society. 

But this system boasts even a deeper reach of virtue. It 
claims to accomplish a veritable Organization of all the native 



l66 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

forces of politics, and thus to endow political society with the 
advantages that the regulated and the vital have over the for- 
tuitous and the mechanic. Surely neither monarchy nor oli- 
garchy can hope to do this, but only democracy. Whether man- 
kind be wise or foolish, benevolent or malicious, makes no odds : 
the problem of government is to put in power general human 
nature, such as it is ; and this can be done only by Organizing 
all its various elements. 

Organization is the finishing display of nature's powers and 
purposes. It is thereby that in vegetation a particle or two 
more or less of innocent carbon or hydrogen may make the dif- 
ference between a poison and a nourishment. It wields the 
power in nature's laboratory that multiplication does in num- 
bers, — accumulating each individual value upon all the rest. It 
is this alone that can inform grossness with a living and effect- 
ive will. Without it the individual voter is but an idle particle 
floating impotent in chaos, like the unsorted and unsettled 
atom in chemistry ; but, a participant there, he awakens to his 
strength, and gathers and sheds influence all around. 

Always has political society flourished or decayed largely 
in proportion to the employment of this principle. At the 
present moment the peace of Europe has no guarantee what- 
ever save a quasi organization of her potentates. The aid of 
this principle is constantly invoked in every social or political 
undertaking. Temperance, sectarianism, labor unions, gran- 
gerdom, free-soil, free trade, and every other public endeavor, 
are consciously vain without it. Said Governor Booth of 
California, in the flush of a popular triumph at the polls over 
railroads, but appreciating its casualness and insecurity : " We 
must have an Organization. Our victory is a mere phe- 
nomenon. There will be times of apathy which must be 
anticipated by Organization." The same, I noticed, was the 
burden of the speeches at a dinner given by distinguished 
" independents " to Mr. Carl Schurz at Delmonico's, April 
26, 1875. So, Organization is instinctively attempted when- 
ever an outraged and indignant public undertakes — always 
in vain — to overthrow its present lords. Until the people are 
Organized their purposes will forever wander, and their efforts 
be in vain. Here, indeed, is the great lack of democracy, from 



THE TRUE SCIENCE OF POLITICAL SOCIETY. 1 67 

time immemorial. In no signification surely, can our present 
system be called an Organization. It is hardly more than a 
mere agglomeration of persons and influences. It may answer, 
like the colonial system of Rome, for the purposes of a census, 
a tax or a conscription, but never the purposes of a free politi- 
cal life. Naught but the helping hand of Political Organization 
in party forms now saves the public will from utter scattered- 
ness and impotence. The methods of that spontaneous, mighty 
and expanding growth, now serving only self-seeking and fa- 
naticism, are here undertaken to be employed to gather in the 
sentiments and secure the interests of the whole community. 
I propose little alteration of those methods except to make 
the Caucus and Convention, which are now nominally but a 
preliminary, the total procedure of democratic choice. 

To find analogies between this mode of organizing political 
society and the familiar operations of nature is no false feat 
of ingenuity, but a true depiction ; for, diverse as are her phe- 
nomena, her methods display throughout a profound iden- 
tity. Everywhere she works by graded integration. In the 
vegetable world rootlets beget roots, and roots the trunk ; and, 
in the human frame, a thousand fibrils join to form each fibre of 
the various chords of sense that gather in the brain to guide our 
footsteps. Each rank of nature's powers rules those above, and 
leans on those below, inspiring and inspired. Thus from vari- 
ety harmony results, high things from mean, and from succes- 
sive change a deep stability. These blessings democracy will not 
find till it possesses itself of nature's method of Organization. 

By this means the spirit of society will arrive at an effectual 
unification, the commonwealth will be solidified, and public 
opinion, which is now a bubble, will become a crystal. The 
thoughts and aspirations of the age are at present but a mob, 
each struggling for precedence, and each impeding the rest, 

u With Chance chief arbiter, 
Who by admixture more embroils the fray." 

But, under the freedom and just relations that are here 
established for every influence, our present confused and waver- 
ing aims will be replaced by nature's clear fixedness of intent. 
Heretofore our career has resembled the restless rushing to and 



l68 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

fro of childhood, or even the spasmodic dance of St. Vitus, 
rather than the ordered and symmetric movement of maturity 
and health. For example, our legislatures are busied half the 
time in taking to pieces to-day the contrivances of yesterday, 
and nigh the other half in bringing out again toys once dis- 
carded. Few are the statutes that survive their authors. Their 
average duration is about three years. 

By this means, too, the life of the State will achieve an 
organic continuity. Thus will each generation securely inherit 
the acquisitions of those that have gone before, strengthening 
constantly the foundations of a higher career; — so that, like to 
what happens in the successive ages of geology, each hour of 
politics will bring forth higher forms of social life, and better 
methods of political adjustment. At the present time, for lack 
of this advantage, the lessons of the past bear little fruit. 
" History repeats itself." Hardly any principle of legislation 
is not still in doubt. Forms and prejudices are about all that 
come down to us. 

This fixation of political truth as the property of society is 
of the utmost importance. If chemic discovery and mechanic 
invention could get no better foothold than the new truths 
that Beccaria, Adam Smith and Alexander Hamilton taught, 
the power of the horse would remain the only horse-power, 
the semaphore our mode of telegraphy, and science still be 
hunting for the philosopher's stone. 

Thus founded on truth, and entrenched in the deep nature 
of things, this system, wherever inaugurated, cannot break 
down of itself. External violence will be its only danger. In 
the Conference of the people it brings together, for fair contest 
or harmonious cooperation, all the forces of political society ; 
in its Representative Electors it stations all about trusty 
guardians of the common weal ; and, in its law of Office- 
tenure, provides a speedy correction for the misbehavior of 
every officer of the people. Scant opportunity, surely, will 
there be, in the presence of such safeguards, for the chance, 
audacity and secret fraud that have heretofore so constantly 
breached or undermined the defenses of popular government. 

The conceit of some fantastic minds that a deeper reform 
of society than this, such as shall even rebuild the ancient and 



THE TRUE SCIENCE OF POLITICAL SOCIETY. 169 

universal institutions of property and family, is needed, re- 
quires not here to be considered. These speculators are but 
like children who would break in pieces the choicest work of 
art, to build out of its fragments playhouses to suit their way- 
ward fancy. It is only a better way of establishing political 
authority that society needs. Only against the present method 
of this has the American citizen a solid ground of much com- 
plaint. 



CHAPTER VIIL 

CORRECTIVE EFFECTS OF THIS SYSTEM. 

THE high expectation of the happy working of this method 
of democratic construction which cannot but be raised 
by the foregoing account of its special features and its philoso- 
phy is made assurance when we consider certain corrections of 
our present evil state that will certainly attend its employment. 

(a) Elections Corrected. 

In the first place it will put a sudden end to all our election 
troubles, — to fraud in its various forms, to uncertainties, un- 
necessary and demoralizing expenditure, and to distracting 
turmoil. 

(i) The ballot-box, traditional panoply of popular rights, 
has turned out to be a poor security against fraudulent elec- 
tions. Since Political Organizations have come to supervise 
and certify the polls, the records of democratic will are no 
longer to be trusted. What with fraudulent naturalization and 
registration, personation, repeating and colonization, false 
counting, false returns and false records, together with unscru- 
pulous partisan arbitrament in disputed cases, we are often 
obliged to doubt whether we are living under our lawful rulers, 
and even sometimes know that we are not. There is little 
question, for example, that in the State of New York not many 
years ago a governor and several members of the supreme court 
were " counted in," — to use an idiom that the frequency of a 
crime till lately unknown to the country has made it necessary 
to invent. There is as little, by the confession of many Repub- 
licans themselves, that in at least two of the States at the last 
Presidential election the vote of the people was so manipulated 
as to make a majority out of a minority in the final returns. In 
February, 1873, a committee of the federal senate, a majority 



CORRECTIVE EFFECTS OF THIS SYSTEM. 171 

of which, viz : Anthony, Logan, Carpenter and Trumbull, 
were partisans of the administration, unanimously reported, 
after a careful investigation at the place of the crime, that the 
returns of the Louisiana election of the year before were " fab- 
ricated " by the functionaries of the federal government. In 
the same State and in South Carolina at a later date (1877), the 
question who was elected governor was decided by the " policy" 
of the incoming president, without any legal inquiry or deter- 
mination whatsoever. 

(2) Mostly from this cheating, but partly also from the 
clumsiness of our election methods, comes frequent uncertainty 
in election results. In the forty-third Congress above twenty 
seats were contested in the House, and five in the Senate. 
This is a greater number of doubtful cases than the whole first 
half of our history presented. In Congress, State legislatures 
and city councils the public business is often at a standstill for 
weeks, the power of either party to move it being lacking in 
consequence of the number of disputed seats. In several of 
the Southern States since their reconstruction it has half the 
time been impossible to say who was the lawful governor. In 
many instances, as well North as South, each party has had 
its separate legislature or common council, and sometimes its 
separate polls. To settle these difficulties the bench is fre- 
quently called in, sometimes to its own demoralization, and 
injunctions, mandamuses and quo warrantos fly thickly about, 
Federal authority crossing swords with State, or party judges 
with each other, making confusion worse confounded. 

These difficulties were not foreseen by the founders of our 
institutions. They intended that in every election the majority 
should rule, but they did not foresee that it would often come 
to be disputed on which side the majority might be. They 
directed that the President should give his support to State 
authority whenever that might be endangered, but they did 
not suppose that that authority would itself be sometimes in 
doubt. They undertook to guarantee republican government to 
all the States, but they did not imagine that in the same state 
two governments might both claim to be republican. 

We had in the last Presidential election a warning of our 
danger from disputed elections that makes other instances al- 



172 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

most superfluous, and that must fill every thoughtful patriot 
with apprehension. Only the memory of civil war then pre- 
vented civil war, and only by going outside of the constitution 
did we save the constitution. When such a trial shall again oc- 
cur, of which there is every four years increasing danger, there 
will be no arbiter but the sword. Many ways have lately been 
suggested of mending the particular defect in our election sys- 
tem out of which this peril grew : but let tinkers beware lest 
they make the matter worse. They may be sure that no patch- 
ing will answer, and that the difficulty will not be effectually rem- 
edied till the plan of elections here proposed is brought into use. 

What with its promiscuous polling, its superintendence by 
the appointees of politics, its discretionary certification and its 
distant record, the present method of elections but furnishes 
invitation to the unscrupulousness of politicians, the recklessness 
of party, and the usurpations of office, and makes uncertainty 
certain. But the system here set forth leaves no possible cJiance 
for fraudulent procedure or doubtful result. It needs no ar- 
gument to show that in the conference of the popular con- 
stituency for the choice of a Primary Representative Elector, 
democracy will be its own sufficient watch, ward, arbiter and 
recorder ; and that in the public sessions and viva voce pro- 
ceedings of the several Colleges of Electors, cheating and un- 
certainty of whatever sort will find no possible room. These 
advantages alone should suffice to ensure the adoption of this 
system. 

(3) The expense of elections is getting to be no small item 
in the public charges. The election of November, 1874, cost 
the city of New York (under a reformed administration !) for 
registry, advertising, the rent, furnishing and repair of polling 
places, for ballot boxes and special police, for clerks, inspectors, 
and so on, above a quarter of a million of money. To choose, 
at a special election, a successor to outlawed Senator Genet, 
involved an expenditure, according to the New York Graphic, 
of a thousand dollars for each of the forty-two election districts 
into which the constituency was divided. It costs my own little 
city of four thousand voters about a dollar a vote each year to 
be in this way a tender to small self-seeking politicians in the 
distribution of offices. These are fair samples of what local 



CORRECTIVE EFFECTS OF THIS SYSTEM. 1 73 

democracy, at least in cities, now has to pay to get itself super- 
intended at the polls. To this is to be added what the federal 
government dispenses to marshals, commissioners, and so forth 
for overseeing the election of Congressmen and Presidential 
Electors, the cost of election contests in legislatures and before 
courts, — and I know not how much else. In the whole, and on 
the average, each taxpayer pays not less than the value of a 
day's work every year for the watching and verification of 
elections, — and by no means gets the business well done after all. 

With the debauchment of our politics this outlay constantly 
swells. A clerk or an inspector of elections used to be paid a 
dollar or two : now this acolyte of politics gets ten times as 
much. It has become quite an object for the ward politician 
to rent a room for a registration or polling place, — and to get it 
afterwards put in better repair than it was before at the public 
cost. To supply fuel to warm the fingers of canvassers, or 
kerosene to illuminate their long deliberations,, is a familiar 
item among the smaller profits of politics. 

Of this expenditure not one-tenth part, it is obvious, will 
be needed, or can find any opportunity, under the system of 
elections here proposed. 

A like saving will there be of the people's time. To say 
nothing of the vital business of attending preliminary Caucuses, 
I now have to go to the polls three times every year, viz : at the 
November State election, at the March municipal election, and 
at the June school election. But when this system is got well 
running I shall be called on to go there but once in several 
years. 

(4) Under this system the miserable turmoil that now pre- 
cedes and accompanies elections will be put an end to, and 
democracy will work out its destiny in the utmost quietness 
and peace. The political campaign is now a scene of tempest 
and tumult, where the natural face of things is changed, and 
whatever integrity belongs to popular purpose is broken mp as 
in a cataract. The guidance of common sense and justice is 
lost in the blaze of party lights and the excitement of per- 
sonal rivalries and attachments. Prejudices are strengthened, 
and pugnacity kindled anew. Solid repute vanishes like smoke, 
while false grows like gourd. Industry and business are inter- 



174 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

rupted, while idleness, dissipation and disorder hold a muster. 
Not seldom election-day has proved a day of violence and riot. 

But nothing of any such sort,, it is evident, will ever attend 
the expression of democratic will after the methods here 
proposed. 

(b) Purification of the Polls from the Refuse of Society. 

But I expect from the employment of this system an im- 
provement in elections more important even than the good 
that will come from the correction of their present fraudulence, 
uncertainty, expensiveness and turbulence. I look to see the 
polls cleared from the attendance of that large class of voters 
who now come there from no good motive, but whose ballots 
weigh as much as ours. The thousands of ignorant foreigners 
who are naturalized and brought to the polls at the expense 
and instigation, and for the use of parties and politicians ; the 
thousands who come there to sell their votes ; the hundreds of 
thousands who have no stake in public affairs, and feel no in- 
telligent interest in them, but who are moved in their political 
action by party prejudice, religious or class bigotry, excitement, 
personal ill will or good will, or other illegitimate influences — 
all these, in a brief period, will voluntarily disappear from this 
arena, lacking inducement to attend there, and be dropped from 
the register of voters ; and the government of the country will 
be left to the honest, the intelligent and the interested, with 
whom it belongs. This class, on the other hand, will come to 
this reformed and purified Caucus in full force, because now for 
the first time both their votes and their influence will have due 
weight. Thus will democracy be raised even above itself. 

(c) Political Organization will not long survive the introduction 

of this System. 
The Caucus will be powerless, the Convention a superfluity, 
the Committee's occupation will be gone. I turn upon the 
usurper his own guns, manned, not by a party, but by the whole 
people. 

With Political Organization 

(d) Politicians, 
its ministers and beneficiaries, such as we know them now, will 
disappear from the stage. The major purposes of democracy 



CORRECTIVE EFFECTS OF THIS SYSTEM. 1 75 

will be fully gathered and empowered by the very operation of 
this system ; and the people, no longer requiring the aid of 
these managers, will no longer submit to their guidance. 

(e) Office-seeking will be Restored to Decency. 

An ambition for the honor, influence, or even the profits 
of public life is not an unworthy motive. But private pursuit 
should wait on public request. He who would have an upper 
seat at the table of democracy should attend the motions of the 
master of the feast. This was once the prevailing custom in 
our politics ; but it is quite the other way now. What is worse, 
office is hardly ever sought except for the money that it will 
bring, per fas aut nefas. The " place-hunting " that brought 
such ignominy on British politics a century ago is now the 
chief spur of ours. It is the first-born of Political Organization, 
still feeds at its breast, and will perish with it. 

(/) An End will be put to Corruption at the Polls. 

These sinister influences got rid of, purity will not fail to 
return to the ballot box. Venality there has now spread from 
one end of the land to the other, and through nigh every grade 
of society. Said the New London (Conn.) Telegram, a rep- 
utable paper, commenting on the State election of 1874 in 
that town : " Among those who unblushingly sold themselves 
for a few dollars were young men connected with respectable 
families, and educated at the High School." It is credibly re- 
ported that at the spring election in New Hampshire in 1876, 
which it was known that a few hundred votes would decide, 
and which was contested with unusual warmth by politicians, 
as being both indicative and influential with regard to the re- 
sult of the ensuing Presidential campaign, many a man sold 
his vote for enough to support him for a year. A fine centen- 
nial change this way of getting a living from the fashion of 
John Stark and Ebenezer Webster ! This in New England, 
famed for democratic virtue ! But who will buy the voter in 
my Conference of the people? 

But an evil deeper and more ancient than any of these will 
be reached and corrected by the operation of this system, for, 
under its influence, 



176 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

(g) Parties and Party Spirit will fast Perish away. 

So constant a companion of free society has the evil genius 
of Party been that the mere student of history will laugh at the 
promise to exorcise it. It is argued, too, that parties are a neces- 
sity. But everything that is is a necessity under the existing 
conditions. In this sense the fungous and eating cancer is as 
necessary as the healthy tissues that it invades. So, parties, I 
admit, are an inevitable accompaniment of democracy as now 
constructed : but I deny that they are of its essence, and I claim 
that by the operation of this system they will be speedily cast 
out among the rubbish of the past. That differences of opinion 
on public questions will forever continue, and personal mastery 
be contended for, and that, at some critical moments in the life 
of communities, adverse flags will still be flung out, is by no 
means doubted : but it is believed that such continuous division 
of the people into opposing political camps as we now con- 
stantly witness will not long survive the application of this 
method of democracy. 

Granted that in the earlier stages of political society, and 
while the fundamental questions of right and power were still 
unsettled ; that in Great Britain, where a steady conflict still 
obtains between reform and conservatism ; that in France, 
where at the present moment (1877) a choice has to be made 
between diverse fundamental ideas of government ; and that 
where race contends with race, nationality with nationality, or 
church with state, as now they do in many parts of Europe, — 
granted that in such cases party has a certain legitimacy, it 
can claim none whatever in this country at the present time. 
Here is no dispute about liberty, equality or nationality ; nor 
conflict between conservatism and reform ; the State does not 
meddle with religion, nor religion threaten the State. Under 
this serene sky the war of parties has no more just place than 
it has in science, art or literature, from whose enlightened 
schools it has long since been expelled. 

Party is but a wry artificial distraction of democracy, and 
not its native symmetrical and harmonious shape. It is proof 
of this, that, when any vital matter comes in issue, the mass of 
a community almost invariably gather on one side. Thus, in 



CORRECTIVE EFFECTS OF THIS SYSTEM. 1 77 

our late sectional war, the body of the people, whether at the 
South or at the North, were of one mind with regard to its 
prosecution. Party spirit sunk as love of country rose. To 
claim the victory of the North in that conflict as a party 
triumph has no support in facts. Rather was it despite of 
party that the Union was saved. The most that parties can 
boast of is, that one of them precipitated the war, and the other 
delayed its conclusion. 

It is the fashion to regard party contentions as the natural 
throes that democracy must endure while she brings her new 
beneficent conceptions into life. But there is nothing in the 
history of this country to warrant this idea. Not from party, 
but from individual efforts, sprang whatever has been creditable 
in our politics. It would not be easy to point out where policy 
or administration has got much advancement on a partisan 
issue. Save slavery and state rights, which in reality were 
never partisan, but sectional questions, all the great topics that 
have divided parties among us, such as free trade, internal im- 
provements, and the fiscal question in its various aspects, are 
as unsettled now as they were fifty years ago. I know not 
what benefit party has brought us that would not have come 
without party. Not the forlorn habiliments of struggling truth, 
but the prevailing fashion, is what parties wear. They concern 
themselves about the new demonstrations of the hour only so 
far as they think they can profit by them. The law of party 
is to stand by party. Not what is right, but what is expedient, 
is its interrogation. In obedience to these rules, it welcomes 
selfishness and fanaticism to its court, while patriotic endeavor 
and high intelligence stand begging without the gates. 

But it is said that parties are needed to watch and restrain 
each other. Their value in this respect, if they have any, is great- 
ly overrated. Seldom has power been hindered by party opposi- 
tion from carrying out its extremest purposes. On the contrary, 
party most often excites party to new excesses. Party fur- 
nishes neither much safeguard of public counsels nor check on 
public vice. Its spirit was high in this country along before 
the civil war ; but it was not in closely contested states, like 
New York, Louisiana and Pennsylvania, where the watchful- 
ness of party would naturally be most eager, that government 
12 



178 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

was wisest and purest, but in South Carolina, Vermont, Massa- 
chusetts and Virginia, where the domination of the Whig or 
of the Democratic party was year after year substantially un- 
disputed. Municipal politics, on a wide survey, would tell 
about the same story. The chief reason of this is, that when 
one party easily has its way, Political Organization, which is 
the main stem of public vices, is little needed by the major, 
and is of no avail to the minor party. Besides, when party 
contest is close, party spirit runs high, and official crimes and 
shortcomings are condoned and winked at, if not approved of, 
even by men of decency. 

But, if party watching is needed, who shall watch the watch- 
men ? The watch is now leagued with the thieves. Recent 
revelations have abundantly shown that Democratic and Re- 
publican politicians hunt in couples, and amicably divide be- 
tween them the conquered quarry. Ostentatiously disputing 
in public, the managers of parties fraternize in a secret guild. 
The stolen profits of the Credit Mobilier operation were 
traced in about equal proportion to the pockets of Democrats 
and Republicans. 

The fact is, that about the only watch upon the conduct of 
public functionaries that is now of any effect, is what is exercised 
over each other by rivals within the party of administration 
itself. Here scrutiny has its best opportunity, accusation a hear- 
ing, and competition some fairness of field. Add, that it is so 
much the custom of opposing partisans to lie about each other 
that a just complaint from a party opponent receives little more 
attention or credence among the people themselves than a false. 

I concede to party in this country, at the present time, the 
single merit of impeding the influence of seated office, which, 
without this hindrance, must soon become able to re-elect itself. 

But, while the reputed benefits of party are almost wholly 
imaginary, its injuries are solid. It is the ancient marplot of 
popular counsels, the family quarrel of free government, contin- 
ually distracting what should be united, and retarding, afflict- 
ing and debauching the whole career of democracy. It is the 
father of unjust prejudice and false reports, of soured neighbor- 
hood intercourse, and even of persecution and civil war, with 
all their horrid train. By the obligation of dependence and the 



CORRECTIVE EFFECTS OF THIS SYSTEM. 1 79 

sympathy of fellowship it leads public "men to keep an unpa- 
triotic faith, since to be created by party is to be the creature of 
party. It is the grand conspirator against political truth, for, 
to the partisan, the fair consideration of public questions is 
already foreclosed. Of what infinite service would it be to the 
home interests of all our States and cities if the national parti- 
sanship which now so distracts the public mind in all elections 
could be got rid of! Nine voters out of ten notoriously are more 
governed in local elections by the party politics of a candidate 
than by any question of his fitness to manage local interests. 

Nevertheless, at the beck of this spurious potentate not 
only are public functionaries established, but public policy is 
shaped. We had startling evidence how it still presides over 
our greatest deliberations when, lately, a Commission of 
higher selection than any known to laws and constitutions 
was set to decide the Presidency, and divided in their vote 
on a straight party line, — a result that there were thousands 
of chances against if the influence of partisanship had been 
excluded from the case. At Washington, in State capitals, 
and in city halls, it is not the majority of the whole rep- 
resentation of the people, but the majority of the domi- 
nant party, assembled in caucus, that customarily decides 
every important public question. Congress in the Presiden- 
tial year is now notoriously occupied with making party 
capital. In the same interest States are shamelessly Gerry- 
mandered, and desert territories converted into states. Not 
seldom the rivalry of parties brings the public business to a 
stand still, and it goes on only when spurred by a new force of 
corruption. 

Whatever virtues party may claim perish with the triumph 
of party. " No party," said Mr. John Bright, " can be eco- 
nomical when in power." Neither can it remain incorrupt. 
Witness the rot of virtue in the Democratic party between 
Jackson and Buchanan; and its still swifter decay in the Re- 
publican party, which, born so lately of a virtuous sentiment, 
is seen already infected with every political vice. The best ac- 
count that can be given of party since the war is as a contest 
between a fading fanaticism and a reviving Tammany, each 
side still grafting upon its own the vices of the other. 



ISO THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

On the whole, it is logical to believe that no solution of our 
present quandary will prove good unless it clears the field of 
politics from party strife. That this can any way be done will 
naturally be doubted. An element with which all democratic 
society throughout history has been permeated may well seem 
essential and ineradicable. But the past does not always pre- 
figure the future. Jupiter and all his satellites fell down before 
a greater God. 

Whether this system will have the force to put an end to 
parties will depend, (i) on how solid is their basis ; (2) on the 
strength of the hold they have on the affections of the people ; 
and (3) on the virtue of the plan itself as a counter-action of 
the false influences that are now the chief support of party 
spirit and party organization. 

(1) To make a sufficient ground for the division of democ- 
racy into two parties, some principle or measure of overwhelming 
significance must be at stake. But certainly there is nothing 
of that sort here now. On the contrary, some dozens of ques- 
tions of nigh equal seriousness, but each governed by a differ- 
ent law, are in dispute in the several fields of government ; and, 
logically, there should be as many party divisions, instead of but 
one. Certainly, neither hard money, protection, the railroad 
difficulties, sectarianism in schools, nor any other of the various 
matters before us at present, is of such supreme import as to 
merit alone to divide the country. Moreover, neither among 
Republicans nor Democrats is there unanimity on any of these 
topics. Accordingly, neither party takes decided ground on 
any of them, but makes its platform up of platitudes, gener- 
alities, doubles entendres, good professions and promises, and 
the easy indictment of the adversary. 

A striking proof of the absurdity and dishonesty of the 
present party division may be seen in the fact that the question 
of the reconstruction of the South, which is by far the most 
important and disturbing issue that has lately entered into fed- 
eral politics, has just been finally settled by a Republican admin- 
istration on Democratic principles / 

Again, supposing parties to be suddenly dissolved, on what 
issue would they gather again ? Obviously, they could gather 
on none. It used to be said that the Whig party had the best 



CORRECTIVE EFFECTS OF THIS SYSTEM. l8l 

men, and the Democratic the best principles ; but neither of our 
present parties has any principles at all, nor can it boast much 
of its men. Such a character as Calhoun, Webster, Wright or 
Benton, might well himself be the nucleus of a party ; but 
this will hardly be claimed for anybody that is now prominent 
in politics. 

(2) Party has no deep hold on the general mind. There is 
of late a great change in this respect. Said a veteran politician 
of note : " Forty years ago every man voted with his party : 
' split tickets ' and ' pasters ' were unknown." It is not so now. 
The great majority of us, as has already been remarked, care 
little for politics, except to have the public business well con- 
ducted, and are conscious of a far deeper interest in local and 
non-partisan than in national issues. We stay inside of party, 
simply because our votes will count for nothing outside. The 
most that intelligent patriotism now hopes from one party is to 
defend it from the other. We assemble ourselves under the 
Republican or the Democratic flag, as in mediaeval Europe the 
peasantry huddled beneath the shelter of baronial castles, 
not from love, but for security against a worse oppressor. Only 
for some inferior minds does party still remain a chain of super- 
stition, cast about their necks by a political priesthood, who 
use in aid of their selfish purposes the contentiousness of hu- 
man nature, every real or imagined diversity of interests, and a 
hell-full of lies. 

(3) Finally, if party among us have so feeble a foothold, as 
well in popular favor as in reason, it should not be deemed to 
be a necessary feature of democracy, nor inexpugnable to hu- 
man device. This plan undertakes to reduce its ancient hold 
by seizing upon a more commanding site, and garrisoning it 
with a mightier power. The assiduous cultivation by politi- 
cians of some minor divergences of popular opinion will fail of 
fruit when their art shall be confronted, as it will be under this 
plan, by the spontaneous and ready empowerment of general 
public sentiment. 

Recall, in this regard, that under this system the pedigree 
of politics takes its start in an assembly of neighborhood voters 
for the purpose of choosing a neighbor to take virtual charge 
of all their various political interests, municipal, county, State 



1 82 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

and national. Surely, these will not allow the distant issues of 
the federal capital alone to array one half of them against the 
other, to the neglect of questions far more important to them 
that lie nearer home. Common sense, and the necessities of 
the situation, will force us to vote for the man who will best rep- 
resent us in our general views, feelings and interests. This the 
more, because our ballots will not tell directly, as they do now, 
on the result of a party struggle. In this arena compromise 
will be felt to be necessary, and the spirit of conciliation be 
encouraged. Often the worst quarrellers agree when brought 
face to face before their acquaintances. 

As little will party trouble the subsequent stages of this 
procedure. What is refused at the root can never appear in 
the branch. The College of Representative Electors is but 
an embodiment and higher expression of the general will. 
When partisanship shall disappear from the concourse of the 
people, it will no longer be seen in the wider fields of public 
authority. If this jack-o-lantern shall cease to mislead the 
average voter, we surely need not fear that it will continue to 
delude his selected representatives. 

When Parties and Political Organization are put an end to 

(k.) The Influence of Office will be A bated ; 

for it will have no flag, no means of concentration, and no allies. 
By the same means the growing tendency to 

(*'.) Centralization will be A rrested. 

It is in the interest of parties and politicians alone that 
city halls are now dictated to from State capitols, and that State 
capitols revolve about the White House, threatening to con- 
vert our democracy into a satrapy. 

Party Organization has begotten in this country a deeper 
Centralization of political power than is written in constitu- 
tions or statutes. All our history shows that it is impossible 
to keep up one set of parties on municipal questions, another 
on State and another on national. The last always over- 
shadows the others, and makes foreign and irrelevant matters 
the sole cynosure of popular regard in every local election. 



CORRECTIVE EFFECTS OF THIS SYSTEM. 1 83 

Thus, in a very pregnant signification, we no longer have local 
government for local purposes. The form of it remains, but it 
is inspired from Washington. How the strength of the national 
party that he belongs to, or his favor with that party, will be af- 
fected, constantly more influences the course of the local func- 
tionary than do the interests of the locality itself. This, at least, 
is a Centralization whose ill effects opinion cannot differ about, 
and which only this system of elections can eliminate from 
our politics. 

(j) " Rotation in Office " will be Corrected. 

This feature of our politics is such a novelty in the world 
that only a recent American idiom furnishes a formula for its 
expression. Never in any other country, nor here till lately, 
has the charge of public affairs, both high and low, been peri- 
odically passed round like the deal at cards, as if to give 
each gamester of politics an equal chance. This custom began 
under Andrew Jackson, who, observing that the actual working 
of our system did not equal expectation, attributed the failure 
to a supposed tendency of office to debauch its holder, and 
proposed to purify the public service by a frequent sweeping- 
out. The suggestion looked plausible to the people, and lovely 
to place-hunters; and "rotation in office" rapidly became a 
prime incentive, instrument and watchword of Political Organi- 
zation. It has now become the settled custom, not only in 
federal, but in State and more local politics ; and, not only be- 
tween parties, but between factions, cliques, neighborhoods, 
conflicting interests and personal rivalries within the party, 
each of them demanding its turn of official power, profit and 
distinction. 

Out of the twenty- five federal senators whose terms expired 
on the fourth of March, 1875, but four were returned again. 
The legislature of Vermont in 1873 contained but thirty out 
of two hundred and sixty members, who had ever seen the 
State capitol before. But one of the present members of the 
common council of the City of Oswego was sitting there three 
years ago. The proportion is about the same in other legisla- 
tive bodies all over the country. So, we have a new governor 
and a new mayor every year or two. The charge of the navy, 



1 84 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

of the public purse, of streets, prisons, and every other great 
public interest, is constantly handed over to novices and experi- 
menters. Even the bench is falling into the same category in 
many cases. 

Thus, when by chance a man of qualification gets on the 
public stage, his part is almost certain to be taken from him be- 
fore he has had time to become familiar with it, before practice 
has ripened his skill, or the audience of the people learned to 
appreciate it. Or, if he stay there long, his efforts are con- 
stantly thwarted by surrounding ignorance, his abilities find 
scanty appreciation, and his just influence must be constantly 
rebuilt among the raw colleagues that rotation in office brings 
about him at every election. Poor career, surely, is there here 
for statesmanship, reward to industry, stimulus to noble mo- 
tives, or warning against mean. Hardly anything has helped 
more than this to let down the charge of the commonwealth 
into unworthy hands, and make the public service a derision. 

The absurdity and wrongfulness of this usage of our politics 
are past expression. Imagine a bank changing its cashier, tel- 
lers and book-keepers every year or two, as we do controllers, 
auditors and other high treasury officials ; or a railroad or 
manufacturing corporation appointing a new superintendent 
at each meeting of its stockholders ; or the captain of a ship 
being taken from the forecastle at every voyage. What can 
be more shameful to democracy than that the dower of the 
widow and the heritage of the orphan should be handed about 
among the young lawyers of the county, as they now are in 
this State, till each has had his opportunity and his party re- 
ward ? or what more damaging than that the difficult busi- 
ness of the lawmaker should be constantly entrusted to hands 
untrained and untried ? How far and wide the bad conse- 
quences of this folly reach, what waste, injustice, disaster and 
profitless turmoil it breeds, how it hinders the correction of 
political evils, and maims democracy in its native faculty of 
progress, the world will never know, nor can common minds 
even imagine, until stability and experience shall lend their 
neglected virtues to public administration, and make a contrast. 

Every feature of my system of democratic construction is at 
war with this foolish and injurious rule. It is self-seeking 



CORRECTIVE EFFECTS OF THIS SYSTEM. 1 85 

Politicians, making use of Party zeal among the people, of 
which they themselves are the interested and principal pro- 
moters, and dividing the spoils that Organized combination 
alone enables them to secure, that bring about this constant 
and injurious change of legislators, executives and judges : and, 
with the disappearance of Party, Political Organizations and 
Politicians, this evil progeny of theirs will also disappear. 
Among the mass of the community there can be neither in- 
ducement nor desire for any change of public functionaries 
without cause ; and, when democracy is truly empowered, these 
may safely expect to stay in their places until they have for- 
feited the public confidence. 

Meantime, there will be no impediment to change of office- 
holders. At present, not only are men turned out of office who 
ought to stay in, but those stay in who ought to be turned 
out ; but, under the plan of Office-Tenure here proposed, the 
public service will free itself from day to day of each unworthy 
member. 

{k) The Public Mind will be Saved from Great Waste of Occu- 
pation and Energy. 

The amount of time and thought that the people now be- 
stow on public matters is indicated by the fact that their prin- 
cipal reading is the newspapers, of which about half the con- 
tents are political and partisan. Old religious enterprises, like 
the New York Observer, find it profitable to divide their col- 
umns between politics and piety. It would not be easy to find 
a mechanic, farmer or professional man who studies the lit- 
erature of his profession as closely as the literature of politics, 
though all his assiduity seldom enables him either to under- 
stand the business, or to acquire a real share in the manage- 
ment of it. 

The plan of elections here proposed does away with all this 
waste. It asks of the voter no more than what he is capable 
of doing well, without harassment or undue occupation. In 
this natural construction of political society there will be no more 
occasion for him to worry himself about who shall be the next 
President, than about who shall succeed Brigham Young ; about 
what shall be done with criminals and paupers, than about who 



1 86 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

shall marry all the red-haired girls ; about a sound currency, than 
about a supply of sweet flour in the market. The business of 
politics will do itself, and the general mind be set free to more 
profitable studies. 

(/) The Press Reformed. 

On the introduction of this plan will ensue great elevation 
and purification of the Newspaper Press. Far beyond schools 
and books, the newspaper is the instructor of the people. With- 
out it, the mass of them would remain to-day nearly as deep in 
ignorance and superstition as they were two centuries ago. But, 
with all its benefits, the press is still somewhat ferce naturce, 
turning often upon democracy to wound it, and even inflicting 
a terrible madness. Through its pretended sympathy with 
strikers it was chiefly to blame for the disastrous lawlessness 
that spread over the country last summer. As a party organ 
and the hired servant of politicians, which it now so largely is, 
there is no wrong that it may not be brought to defend, nor 
any righteous cause that it will not shamelessly forsake. It 
debauches its very debauchers, and parties and politicians them- 
selves are often the worse for its communion. 

But under the system here set forth who will buy its influ- 
ence? or what profit will it find in lies? It will no longer be 
partisan when parties are abolished, nor the tool of politicians, 
when politicians are no more. Then will it serve a better cause. 
The evil practices that it now follows are foreign and unwel- 
come to its native strain. It owns a higher instinct than to be 
the organ of demagogues, the instrument of conspirators, the 
weapon of hatred or fanaticism, or a cowardly waiter on events ; 
and, when it shall be released from its present false obligations 
and artificial necessities, it will start forward, like Pilgrim freed 
from his pack of sin, upon a higher path. 



CHAPTER IX. 

CREATIVE FORCES OF THIS SYSTEM. 

BUT this plan of government is not a mere corrective, to 
purge from the body politic, like some homely med- 
icine, infesting parasites and the morbidities that unwhole- 
some surroundings have engendered there : it will also prove a 
fountain of positive good, an informing principle of truth, and 
the basis of a higher life. Claiming to be the method of na- 
ture, it claims also to possess all the beneficent fertility of na- 
ture. Endowing political society with the full possession of 
itself, it promises it the fruition of all its lawful hopes. 

(a) It will put the Right Man in the Right Place. 

Just in proportion as they accomplish this, are political in- 
stitutions successful. Government must be administered by 
men, and " that which is best administered is best." Says Car- 
lyle : " The finding of your able men is the business of all 
social procedure whatsoever." To have the right man in the 
right place is to have wisdom in law, justice in judgment, vigor 
in execution, and purity in them all. 

It certainly will not be pretended that this object is gener- 
ally accomplished in this country now. Says the critic of affairs 
just quoted : " The Yankee nation is now doing the worst work 
in this regard that I see anywhere." It is men of a trashy sort, 
for the most part, that fill our councils. Public sentiment, un- 
hinged or infected by the prevailing spectacle, grows contented 
with the scantiest range of qualifications in its representatives ; 
and when, by chance, we get a man who really does honor to 
his office, we are as much surprised and delighted as the urchin 
who, after many losing ventures, at last really finds a prize in 
his prize package. Nay, it sometimes looks as though democ- 



188 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

racy, like dwarfs, giants and other monsters, were beginning to 
pride itself upon its own deformities. The fanaticism of a party 
leader, the brutality of a war minister, the brazenness of an in- 
dicted senator, and the unwinking insensibility of a high execu- 
tive, excite our admiration. We even are a little proud of 
Tweed. 

This failure to put the right man in the right place is be- 
lieved to have been here traced to its real source, and its logical 
correction to have been prepared. No longer, under this 
system, will the genius of democracy be either bewildered or 
hampered, and the fittest selection of public agents that human 
nature is capable of cannot but be habitually arrived at. 

(b) By the Prospect of this the Worthiest Citizens will be At- 
tracted toward Public Life. 

To regulate society as the family is regulated by a wise 
head, to adjust its warring interests, to clear its path from weeds, 
rubbish and petrifactions, to stake out its future course, and to 
plant new seeds of civilization, prosperity and peace, is of 
all occupations the most attractive to high and virtuous am- 
bition. Compared with it, the gathering of wealth is a mean 
pursuit, and all the employments of philosophy, literature and 
art a puerile. There are plenty of able, cultivated and virtuous 
men in this country who will be prompt to engage in public 
life whenever it shall be fairly opened to them. It is not so 
much " the coming man " that is lacking, as the door to let 
him in. " No where else," says a keen-sighted traveller, George 
Augustus Sala, " are so many men of shining talents, noble 
minds and refined tastes buried alive as in the United States." 
Nowhere else are the questions that concern the public welfare 
more assiduously studied, or the public interests more anxiously 
regarded. 

But what inducement is there now for talent or patri- 
otic spirit to enter the field of politics ? In the company of 
fools wisdom is the supremest folly ; and virtuousness, in 
the midst of knaves, works like a vice. Poor motive, surely, 
would there be for competition in schools if prizes were dis- 
tributed there as favor and advancement are in our politics. 
Thus it is that the best class of men have nigh all cast out 



CREATIVE FORCES OF THIS SYSTEM. 1 89 

public ambition : but they will quickly yield again to its high 
seducticfns when by this system merit shall be reasonably 
sure of due encouragement and fair reward. 

(c) Then too will Spirited and Ingenuous Youth make Politics 
their Study and Ambition. 
This is a phenomenon that has always characterized the 
most successful epochs of free societies. In the best governed 
states of Europe at the present time young men of prom- 
ise, impulse and opportunity make the public business their 
regular pursuit, just as they do engineering, farming or sculp- 
ture. The like devotion characterized this republic in its earlier 
career, constantly refreshing it with new life. But now it would 
be difficult to find a single ingenuous and instructed youth who 
proposes to find his occupation in public life. If its very aspect 
does not repel him, sage experience warns him off. " Keep 
out of politics," says every prudent father to his son, as who 
should say " avoid the scarlet woman." But, restored to purity 
and fair competition by the honest system here proposed, pub- 
lic avocation will renew all its native attractions, and the flower 
of the country will gather about the service of the country. 
Then, and only then, will the American people successfully as- 
sert the same superiority in political skill that is now freely con- 
ceded to them in so many other fields. 
Thereby we shall have 

(d) Trained Men in the Public Employ. 
At the present time the preparation and expertness that we 
insist on in private business are made but little account of in 
public. Less special knowledge is put in charge of the canals 
than is needed to run a canal boat. Some skill is thought to be 
necessary to shape a jug or a horse-shoe, but not to make laws. 
Not every one can be trusted to mend a watch, but any body 
can tinker the constitution. Queer training of statesmanship 
we have now ! The Caucus and the Convention are the acad- 
emy, the party press and the party platform the text books, 
and the Fagans of politics the instructors of them who prin- 
cipally control our affairs. So rare is proper qualification 
for public business that if a fit man is wanted to superintend 
streets, prisons, almshouses, education, insurance or any other 



I90 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

the like common interest, he is not easy to be found. Law- 
makers, executives and diplomatists habitually come raw to 
their work. Inland men administer the navy, and men of peace 
the army ; and new-appointed Secretaries of the Interior, the 
Treasury, and the Post Office, cram for their duties, like school- 
boys for a sudden examination. This lack of prepared skill in 
public functionaries not only impedes, but robs us. No end of 
losses to public treasuries result from the fact that contractors 
and the brokers of politics understand the laws, methods and 
influences of the public business far better than do the officers 
of the law themselves. 

Nothing is plainer than the need of more instruction and 
experience in the business of the commonwealth. Not till our 
affairs are made in large degree a special study and occupation 
can we hope to see them well conducted. The steady light of 
skill and science must be substituted for the visions of closest 
speculation, and the glancing reflections of popular fancy. 
The most successful governments use little green timber in 
their constructions. Lustrum after lustrum the same names 
appear in all their conspicuous councils, growing in influ- 
ence as they grow in the attributes of instruction and experi- 
ence. It is the constant custom of the British parliament to 
hand over the bulk of the difficult and important questions 
that come before it to commissions of experts for examina- 
tion, and, in effect, for settlement. In our own case it may be 
doubted whether the best conducted parts of government are 
not those few that are still left in charge of old officers of ad- 
ministration, such as lively politicians call fossils. 

A comparison of common with statute law furnishes a strik- 
ing illustration of the advantage of skillfulness over unskillful- 
ness in the regulation of political society. Whether as an 
adjustment of conflicting private claims, a reconciliation of 
civil rights and duties, or a rule of judicial procedure, nothing 
more beneficent than the former has ever been furnished to the 
world. Even human slavery, the most ancient, wide-spread 
and powerful, as well as the most wicked of all the estab- 
lishments of selfish power, has had to confess its virtuous 
force. It was an edict of Chief Justice Holt that in Great Britain 
outlawed property in man a century and a half ago ; and it was 



CREATIVE FORCES OF THIS SYSTEM. 19 1 

the equally bold and energetic, though less renowned decision 
of Chief Justice Harrington, of Vermont, proclaiming that 
nothing but " a Bill of Sale from God Almighty " could give 
one man the right to own another, that gave slavery in this 
country its first and ultimately fatal wound. 

Now, the common law was wholly the work of expert law- 
yers, raised to the bench. It has been called, with little exag- 
geration, " the perfection of reason." But who will call our 
statute law the perfection of reason ? Rather let it be entitled 
a panorama of ineptitudes. But for the presence in our legis- 
latures of some instructed lawyers, it would be in daily fresh re- 
volt against itself, for the majority of those who sit there are 
as ignorant of what the law is, as of what it ought to be. Only 
when our legislative halls shall be filled by experts in political sci- 
ence, as is the high judicial bench by experts of the law, will their 
business be as well conducted as is now the business of courts. 

The growing number, breadth and complexity of political 
interests demand constantly augmented qualifications in those 
who undertake to regulate them. " The achievements of the 
age," says Gladstone, " seem ever to be confronted by new 
problems that almost defy solution." Enlightened opinion is 
no longer satisfied that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness 
are secured to them, but demand also some help from govern- 
ment toward social progress. The railroad question alone, in 
its various bearings, involves more difficulties than all the po- 
litical issues that vexed Greece, or that raised the Revolution. 
Only great talents, long devoted to the study of them, can 
solve such problems. 

This system will not fail to bring about 

(e) A true Aristocracy, or Government of the Best. 

— I mean not the primitive domination of audacity, cunning 
or physical prowess ; not the reign of a caste, superior in birth, 
wealth or occupation ; not an oligarchy of lawyers, such as De 
Tocqueville declared our government was fast becoming, nor 
of politicians, which it actually is ; but the freely conceded 
authority and rule of the most able and upright. 

Some principle and form of leadership are instinctive among 
all gregarious beings. The mass of mankind need guidance quite 



I92 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

as much as liberty. Always the welfare of the many has de- 
pended on the genius of the few. But for a small number of 
luminous minds the darkness of the Middle Ages would still en- 
shroud Europe ; and, were society from this time onward to be 
decimated of its ablest and most virtuous members, we should 
sink back into barbarism far faster than we have escaped 
from it. It is due in no small degree to her more constant 
employment of great qualities in the conduct of great affairs 
that the government of England, of whose illustrious and in- 
structive story I cannot make too frequent mention, has stood 
so long a fixed and blazing star, amid floating nebulae, wild-wan- 
dering comets and changing moons. In Italy and in Germany 
this very generation has seen a single commanding nature be- 
stow unity, security, confidence, and independence, on a nation 
before scattered, bewildered, harassed and enslaved. Our own 
politics have had no reasoned or distinctive career in any ex- 
tensive field except when talents beyond the common have 
laid out their course. It may be doubted whether the Albany 
Regency was not the best government that the State of New 
York has ever had. How great a blessing it would be to Chi- 
cago, New Orleans or Troy if all its polling places were closed, 
and all its various economies committed to the sole charge of 
a Rumford, or even a Goshorn or a Welsh ; and how great to 
this whole country, if some mighty genius could come upon the 
public stage to jar our present discords into concord by his very 
momentum, and boldly grapple with the problems of the future ! 

It is safe to say that nothing valuable to society has ever 
originated in popular effort or demand. The people may 
sometimes approve of beneficent reforms, but they never origi- 
nate them. On all but elementary questions, what popular 
opinion needs is not a mouth-piece, but an instructor. The ob- 
ligations of the weak and the ignorant to the strong and the 
wise are on the whole far greater than the converse obligations : 
The labor of the many, to be sure, upholsters the luxurious 
chambers of the few, but it is the might, enterprise and pru- 
dence of the few that give labor its opportunity, and ensure a 
supply of bread to its thoughtless stomach. 

When the most capable members of society shall be put in 
the steady control of its affairs 



CREATIVE FORCES OF THIS SYSTEM. 193 

(/) System will be Inaugurated in Politics, 

and the philosophy of government will grow to a science. 
There is plenty of political truth extant now, but it lies scat- 
tered, heads to points, friendless, often, and at waste ; but by 
force of this improvement it cannot fail to be gathered, codified 
and put to use. Not till this happens shall we know how much 
better is regulation than disorder. 
By the operation of this system 

(<£*) True Progress will be Promoted, and False A r rested. 

At present the soundest propositions of reform have to con- 
tend on hardly better than equal terms with the most sense- 
less. When a man has devised some correction or improvement 
in policy or administration his work has only begun. He must 
wage a long war with possession, cultivate the favor of the 
masters of politics and parties, gain the ear of legislatures, sub- 
due prejudices, and teach reason to fools. If he appeal directly 
to the people, he finds their attention absorbed by phantasms 
and frivolities, or dulness, habit and inertia block the way. 
But, in the instructed public councils that are believed here 
prepared, true reform will find a ready and solid foothold, 
and receive an impetus unknown before. None the less will the 
mushroom growths of popular enthusiasm, and the false pro- 
jects of demagogues and self-seekers, which sometimes now 
reach even the proportions of presidential issues, cease to vex 
the public calm. Thus shall we be rid of the pest of noisy 
pseudo-reformers, who, claiming to be the pioneers of progress, 
no more in fact deserve that appellation than did the bummers 
that spread out before Sherman's army to be entitled the ex- 
plorers of its path. 

(h) Thus will Progress and Stability be Reconciled and 
Unified. 

Our present political condition is mixed in about equa' pro- 
portions of fossilization and senseless change. On the one hand, 
forms and institutions that once were full of life and beneficence, 
but now are stony and obstructive, still stand fast-rooted in 
their unprofitable place — like ancient forest trees whose sap 
13 



194 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

and verdure have long since departed, and which but hinder 
now the upspringing of new life, — while, on the other, vague 
popular discontent and emotional yearning, spurred on by the 
virtue of rogues and the wisdom of fools, force upon us an un- 
ending series of damaging or useless changes. But, under this 
system, each generation, it is believed, will freely cast off the 
effete, the nocuous and the irksome, while all the forces of 
progress, assembled in full strength, will work their work un- 
hindered and in due proportion. Meantime, all the deep living 
purposes of society will hold their ground, and inheritance, 
possession, custom and tradition maintain their just influence ; 
for, a reform in methods, this system is conservative of principles. 
When such conjunction and reconciliation shall be had, and 
only then, political society will move forward with the assured 
step of science, and with the steadiness of time, and will display 
all the symmetric graces of organic development. Then, too, 
things settled once may hope to be settled for good, and the 
Monsieur Tonsons of political inquiry will no longer return use- 
lessly to disturb our rest. 

A very popular author, Mr. J. S. Mill, whose voluminous- 
ness is only equalled by his dullness, has argued, that, in every 
free, government there will necessarily be a party of reform and 
a party of conservatism. But no foundation for such a doctrine 
is to be found in human nature. All men desire both to save 
what they have that seems to be good, and to press forward to 
what promises something better ; and, for the most part, they 
follow both purposes with about equal zeal. It is only our 
false methods of politics that leave us to be tossed between the 
extremists of the two ideas. Brought into harmonious co- 
operation by this system, these contradictory elements will 
beget a single and sovereign result, — as from the combination 
of bitter alkalies and eating acids come forth the choicest pro- 
ducts of the laboratory. 

— But the forward movement of society, it must be remem- 
bered, will, after all, be necessarily slow. Time, says Lord 
Coke, is the best innovator. Says Aristotle : " All that 
belongs to the present hour is vain against old inheritance." 
Twenty centuries and odd have added little to the wisdom of 
Solomon. Natura non facit per saltum. " The story of man," 



CREATIVE FORCES OF THIS SYSTEM. 195 

says Bagehot, " can change only as the slow moving diorama 
changes ; while you look you hardly see it alter." Growth is 
the most solid of reforms, and slow civilization its own chief 
apostle and promoter. To sanguine youth it may seem that 
human society is just blossoming into beauty, but old observa- 
tion and reflection know better. 

This system will restore to the popular mind 

(z.) Confidence in Government, Respect for Law, aud Content 
with the Public Service. 

Its continuity of authority, its combined elasticity and fix- 
edness, its broad basis and symmetric, well fastened and 
weighty superstructure, holding the very foundation to its place, 
must, to every eye, forbid the approach of shattering crisis and 
rebellious wrong, and inspire society with a steady faith. That 
this security of order and prosperity is now greatly lacking is 
not strange. When the most important questions are settled 
in Congress, State legislatures and city councils by a party 
caucus, when the revenues of the state become the spoil of its 
dignitaries, when taxation makes property an impoverish- 
ment, when judges practice self-seeking, when mean men sit 
in high places, and when lobbies make our laws, what respect 
can authority inspire, or how can patriotic intelligence feel at 
ease ? 

(j) Thus will that Social Calm return 

in which alone the choicest products of brooding time have 
birth. Society is like a mother liquor, wherein uncounted ele- 
ments and germs lie mingled. Agitated^ it must remain for- 
ever muddy, and can bring forth naught else but noisome gases 
and inert conglomerations ; but, suffered to stand in quiet rest, 
so that its various components may freely assert their native 
attractions and repulsions, its clear depths will soon be seen 
packed with bright crystals and growing forms of life. So, 
when the public mind shall be spared its present political dis- 
tractions and anxieties, it will freely apply itself to a multitude 
of profitable aims which it now neglects, and gather store 
of richest fruits where now are to be seen but barrenness 
or weeds. 



196 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

(k) The virtuous influence of this system on Public, will be 
mirrored in Private Life. 

To have the right man in the right place in politics will 
help to put him there in all the more personal relations of life. 
Wise laws will promote all forms of wisdom, and virtuous rulers 
every virtue. As the successful fraudulence of the party caucus 
and convention has planted society thick with poisonous spores, 
so will a system of politics that gives rectitude preferment engraft 
its own virtuousness on every department of human intercourse. 
When justice, honor and harmony shall be seen to prevail in 
the high seats of power, they will receive invigoration in all 
private business and in every household ; while contention, 
greed, falsehood and intrigue will get a set back : preachers 
will deal more righteously with their flocks, and grocers with 
their customers ; children will be more docile, women more 
womanly, and men more brave ; all forms of iniquity will be 
cowed and every right be strengthened. Indeed, the full benef- 
icent consequences of this just arrangement of political society 
stretch beyond our present conception, — as the colonists of 
New England's inhospitable shores thought never of the fertile 
prairies that lay beyond. This system renovates political so- 
ciety from the bottom ; and as, when wells are dug, deep mother 
earth, thrown up to light and air, reveals new seeds, so now will 
new enlivened democracy surprise the world with virtues hid- 
den hitherto. 

(/) The full Benefits of this System not Immediate. 

Neither the corrections nor the creations of this system will 
be accomplished in a moment. Party spirit, the habitude of 
self-seeking, and the prestige of the old leaders of politics, will 
delay for a period the full triumph of honest democracy : and, 
when these shall have been subdued, time will still be required 
for the maturing, assembly and consolidation of new powers, — 
as, after weeds and brambles are torn out, the soil must still 
have tilth and seeding ere it brings forth the fruits that feed 
and solace man. A myriad of false tutelary images must be 
displaced, and new commandments from a new Sinai be printed 
on the public mind, before we shall know how well democracy 



CREATIVE FORCES OF THIS SYSTEM. 197 

can do. So long have the people obeyed the lead of politicians 
that for a spell they will hardly feel able to go alone. Both in 
the Popular Conference and in the Electoral College some pu- 
pilage will be necessary to expertness in new duties, and some 
practice for the establishment of new habits. Not in a day will 
the body of the people learn how to profit by their new auton- 
omy, nor their selected delegates rightly to appreciate and 
discharge their high responsibilities ; nor, till after long work- 
ing together, will all legitimate influence coalesce in the estab- 
lishment of public authority in the full shapeliness that human 
nature and the civilization of the age admit of. 

The complete beneficence of this system will be delayed, too, 
by the fact that not only must the sort of characters that now 
regulate democratic career be cast out, but new and better men 
must be found, and brought from obscurity to occupy those 
posts of public power and responsibility from which, under this 
dispensation of self-seeking politicians, they are repelled by 
every instinct of honor and prudence. Time, also, will be re- 
quired to train them to their new calling. Not till ingenuous 
talent shall be nourished and practiced in our politics for some 
period, as false assumption has so long been, will it fully dis- 
cover to itself, or to the world, its slumbering virtues. 

Moreover, when the right man shall have been put in the 
right place it will not be the mere work of a day to correct 
existing abuses in the administration of government, and still 
less to place it in full consonance with the intentions of the 
age, and fit it to the grooves of progress. Equally will 
time be necessary to give to politics and public life, in their 
reformed example, the full matured influence over social, busi- 
ness and domestic relations that naturally belongs to govern- 
ment. 

Neither is perfection claimed for the results of this system. 
Human nature, which knows no perfection, must be taken in- 
to account in all political calculations. This I undertake, not 
to medicine, but only to employ. With development im- 
perfections multiply, like powers. The loveliest woman is 
not so beautiful as a butterfly, and hardly as toothsome as an 
oyster. Her husband is less dutiful than her pony, and the 
baby in her lap inherits more vices than her lap-dog. But I 



198 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

do claim that, year by year, this just, logical and comprehensive 
plan will work better and better, in infinite progression, and 
that time can beget no emergency that it will not prove 
equal to. 

It is believed that this method of political construction is 
adapted to every community that is raised above barbarism. 
The substance of human nature is the same everywhere. The 
prevailing notion that the several divisions of the Caucasian 
race are fitted for different forms of government — as the Rus- 
sian for despotism, the British for oligarchy, and our own for 
democracy — is preposterous. Equally absurd is the common 
saying that the French is unfitted for any. If it is, all nations 
are. When a suit of garments does not suit the fault is rightly 
laid to the workman's want of skill, and not the build of the 
customer. So of forms of government. This system would 
justify itself in every country of Europe, as well in Turkey as 
in Sweden, in Belgium and in the dominions of the Czar, 
where practice has already been had in existing so-called modes 
of popular government, and where it has not. On the dis- 
orders and diseases of the Southern republics of this hem- 
isphere it would work like a charm ; nor, till they employ it, 
can any of them escape the anxieties, discords and convulsions 
with which they are now afflicted. 

Not till it is adopted by a neighborhood of nations will its 
most sovereign virtues be revealed. Then wars will cease, and 
Europe will look back upon her present career as she does 
now upon the senseless and bloody strife of the Dark Ages : 
and then mankind, long shocked by the spectacle of the inju- 
ries that governments so often inflict, will wonder at its new 
beneficence. 

The Administration of Government. 

The propositions of this system relate only to the method 
of constituting political society. A reform in that involves all 
other reforms. Therefore, to turn from the consideration 
of their rationale and general influence to the argument of 
particular matters of administration, is as though Stevenson 
had quit the study of the construction of the locomotive 
to teach its engineer his duties, or to help each belated trav- 



CREATIVE FORCES OF THIS SYSTEM. 199 

eller home on a wheelbarrow. It would also be to engage 
in an endless task ; for there is hardly a topic of public policy 
but what is still in dispute, or a particular of administration that 
does not need to be corrected. Nevertheless, it may be 
worth while to touch upon a single problem of practical gov- 
ernment, that, in one form or another, constantly demands 
solution ; with a view the more clearly to indicate the unsatis- 
factoriness of our present state, and the urgent need of greater 
capabilities at headquarters than what now administer the 
commonwealth. 

The Paternal Principle. 

Ought government to be a means of security only, or of 
progress also ? and, if the latter, where shall the line be drawn 
that separates its functions from the functions of the individual ? 
Both in theory and practice this chief water-shed of political 
administration is now entirely undefined. Those who think with 
Carlyle, Spencer and Buckle would have government refrain 
from every attempt to aid social advancement, while another 
as numerous a school desire it to be almost communistic. So, 
in some cities water-works, gas-works and street railroads are a 
public enterprise, and, in others, a private. Pennsylvania has late- 
ly transferred her canals to private ownership ; but the latest 
constitution of New York forbids that ours should ever be sold. 
On the one hand it is proposed that insurance and banks of 
saving should be a government matter, and, on the other, that 
law should not even supervise them. Some of us want to make 
education compulsory, to prescribe for labor its hours, and for 
money its rent ; while others would leave all such matters to 
individual impulse and competition. 

Three things have begot in many minds a strong prejudice 
against interference by the state with personal autonomy any- 
farther than bare justice and security require. First, the idea, 
handed down from despotic times, that there is a natural an- 
tagonism between the people and their rulers ; second, the in- 
jurious perversions of the paternal principle that the best gov- 
ernments have so often exhibited ; and, third, the frightful 
claims of communism, which has shown as much audacity, and 
bred as much trouble and apprehension in this generation as 



200 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

in any within historic times. Nevertheless, the long-practiced 
and successful provision by government of roads, bridges, post 
offices, light-houses, street lights, and other necessaries of civ- 
ilized society, compels the most timid, prudent and self-reliant 
to confess that the fatherly hand of political power, though 
often oppressive and cruel, is also often beneficent. 

The only real question is, to determine what matters it shall 
touch, and from what abstain. To settle this in principle 
does not seem difficult, though to say to which side particular 
cases would belong might sometimes require careful scrutiny, — 
as the surveyor's compass can quickly indicate the direction of 
a boundary, though the slow chain and many metes and bounds 
may still be needed to tell each bordering proprietor which 
trees along the line are his. One of Jefferson's giant apo- 
thegms covers the whole case. " Governments should do noth- 
ing for the citizen that the citizen can do for himself." In 
other words, the paternal function in politics is properly co-ex- 
tensive with the list of wants that are common to the members 
of a community, but which the individual by himself is unable 
satisfactorily to supply. For example, the resident of a city 
needs for various purposes an abundant provision of water ; but 
to secure it himself, by well, aqueduct or cistern, is out of the 
question. This, therefore, is a want that the municipality should 
attend to, in part at least, at the common cost. That there may 
be a few who do not need or desire the water makes no odds : 
the neighborhood is lord over the neighbor. 

This subject is of peculiar interest in the important case of 
municipalities. What with the finer division of labor and con- 
sequent concentration of industries, the strengthening of social 
appetites that accompanies civilization, the multiplication of 
conveniences and pleasures that can be enjoyed only where 
population is concentrated, and the constant fresh facilities for 
movement and intercommunication, the day seems not to be 
far distant when a majority of the people will be gathered in 
cities or other large compact neighborhoods. Now, the peo- 
ple in St. Louis, or San Francisco, have few concerns in com- 
mon with the people in Portland or New York, but they have 
a good many in common with each other. In the former case 
national protection, free and peaceful intercourse, and the post- 



CREATIVE FORCES OF THIS SYSTEM. 201 

office, are about all ; while, in the latter, are streets, drainage, a 
harbor, water supply, schools, police, and ever so many more. 
Accordingly, a widely extended government, like the federal 
Union, seldom has just occasion to exercise paternal functions ; 
but a community of narrow geography often has. 

With the progress of civilization th*e number of this class 
of interests constantly increases. Till the wagon-wheel was 
invented, the narrow mountain path and the rough plain an- 
swered all the purposes of roads ; and, till medical science had 
accumulated, quarantines and boards of health were of little 
use. Accordingly, we constantly see proprietorship more and 
more giving place to common rights, — as when a toll-gate is 
taken down, or the ferry-boat of pioneer enterprise is sup- 
planted by a public bridge, or when Trinity House at the cost 
of half a million purchases the private light at Skerry Head, 
which for so many generations had guided and taxed the com- 
merce of Liverpool. 

Although, whether in this country or elsewhere, public 
authority has most often meddled with this sort of business 
only to muddle it, and, abstaining where it should interfere, 
has interfered where it should abstain, thoughtful and observing 
minds will still agree that it is alike the duty and the destiny 
of political society to undertake a wider range of paternal 
functions than is now exercised by it in this country. All 
about innumerable signs to this effect are to be seen ; as when 
so many cities are furnishing their own gas, with great economy ; 
when Belgium, Bavaria and France show themselves able to 
manage railroads, to the advantage, as against private con- 
trol, of all parties concerned ; when the Canton of Switzerland 
insures its property-owners against loss by fire at the lowest rate 
ever heard of, and supplies school books to its children at 
less than one-fourth part of what ours pay for them ; when the 
government of Great Britain beneficially absorbs the savings 
bank and the telegraph, and even builds up in its Indian pos- 
sessions the foreign industries of tea, cinchona and india-rub- 
ber ; and when, among ourselves, the signal service, the life- 
saving service, pisciculture and other public undertakings that 
are strictly paternal, have lately proved of such high service 
to the general welfare. Only in such a way can the injurious 



202 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

irruptions, lodgments, deficits and obstructive shallows of the 
wide watery element be hindered or remedied. Says Mr. E. J. 
Cahill of St. Louis, who is reputed to possess uncommon knowl- 
edge of the subject: " Fifty million of dollars once judiciously 
and honestly spent in leveeing the Mississippi and its lower 
tributaries would increase the productiveness of that valley by 
half a billion annually." This work, by the by, is worse con- 
ducted now, from all accounts, than it has been before since its 
inauguration in 1717. The undrained and sickly marshes of 
Montezuma, the swamps of the Kankakee, the bogs of the 
Sacramento, and a thousand other similar scenes of native fer- 
tility at waste, can be redeemed from desolation and malaria 
to human use only by the employment of the paternal prin- 
ciple in government. In no other way, on any wide scale, can 
irrigation be employed, whose fertilizing potency, in India, 
Egypt, Lombardy and Peru, has shown itself a source of wealth 
compared with which the obscene heaps of the Chinchas and all 
the buried coprolites of Carolina are but as the dry spoor of 
some lone wandering bison to the juicy richness of the popu- 
lous farmyard. What else but the protecting care of govern- 
ment can save or restore to the wide slopes and thick-scattered 
spurs of the long range of the Alleghanies the woody breeders 
of surrounding fertility that once garnished the landscape, and 
fend off the fast approaching barrenness and desolation of 
Judea, Greece and Sicily? Or, in our own State, what else 
can keep the region of the Adirondacks a happy hunting ground 
for nature's tastes, and spongy reservoir of useful rains, instead 
of the horrid hatchel of geologic spikes which it threatens to 
become ? In the nature of things there is just the same reason 
why government should manage the telegraph as the post- 
office, and why railroads should belong to the public domain 
as why common highways and rivers should. It is the nat- 
ural right of every man, not only to pass to and fro upon the 
earth, but also to have the free and equal enjoyment of all the 
facilities for that purpose that belong to the generation but 
cannot be supplied by the individual. Not that the ownership 
and operation of railroads can be profitably undertaken by gov- 
ernment in this country now, but that under a better constitu- 
tion of democracy it will be. Under our present laws this in- 



CREATIVE FORCES OF THIS SYSTEM. 203 

stitution is half a private possession and half a public easement, 
and, until it is wholly the one or the other, it must own to the 
weakness and discord of a house divided against itself. Through 
legislative sins of commission, permission or omission in the 
regulation of this great interest an uncountable sum of money 
has passed from the possession of those who earned it into 
that of adventurers, gamblers, the demagogues of the stump, 
the vultures of the bar and the bank, and the conspirators 
of Wall street. I know not when such panel-house was ever 
prepared for the unwary as when, at the instigation of false 
projectors, the law encouraged the silly voter to mortgage 
his house, his farm, his industry, and his provision for a com- 
fortable old age to speculative enterprises that were wholly 
beyond his understanding ; — thus lustful countrymen are lured 
into the chambers of sin, robbed of their cash, and turned help- 
less out of doors. It is by the fault of lawmakers, too, that the 
waters of the Rocky Mountains and the Sierras, which ought 
forever to remain the equal heritage of all the people, are fast 
becoming a monopoly of private corporations, to be fed out 
inch by inch for a royalty to the dwellers on the thirsty plains 
below. 

— In many cases, on the other hand, our governments are 
now quite too ready with the exercise of the paternal function. 
The instance of education is the only one I shall mention in 
illustration of this truth. 

At a centenary celebration of some public school in Boston 
last summer the opinion was expressed by three of its dis- 
tinguished pupils, Messrs. Wm. M. Evarts, Wendell Phillips 
and Rev. Dr. Peabody, that the institutions of learning in this 
country, and especially the common school, are deteriorating. 
This, I believe, is the prevailing judgment among intelligent, 
observing and educated men, and I strongly join in it : and 
I lay the disastrous change to too much interference with the 
matter by the State, instigated thereto, and guided therein, by 
a set of educational, but not educated quacks, whom our false 
system of politics has lifted into influence and power. 

Down to about the time of Horace Mann, some five and 
thirty years ago, the legislatures of New England meddled lit- 
tle with the common school, except to make its establishment 



204 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

and support compulsory in every neighborhood, leaving its 
management in all particulars to the parents and taxpayers 
of each district. Even the method of levying the necessary tax 
was determined by a vote of the people assembled in school 
meeting. This was usually done by assessing it " one half on 
the Grand List and one half on the polls of the scholars," — than 
which distribution between property and persons of the expense 
attending the conduct of social interests none better was ever 
planned by the most selected senate. The same authority, act- 
ing through a committee from among themselves, regulated the 
school-house and the hours of school, examined and hired the 
schoolmaster, and determined, when necessary, what school 
books should be employed. So our academies and colleges, 
down to about the same period, though favored, empowered and 
guarded by the law, were neither its creation nor its creature, 
but were in all cases the issue and concern of individual enter- 
prise, professional zeal, piety or public spirit. Each of them was 
the pride of its neighborhood, and spread around, it is not too 
much to say, all the best influences of learning. In short, the 
whole matter of education was then left, where it still ought 
to be, to the anxious judgment of parents, the competition of 
teachers, the zeal of local interest and religious persuasion, 
and to individual generosity. Was ever the business anywhere 
better done ? 

But now all this is changed. In the case of common schools 
State superintendents, county commissioners and city boards 
have supplanted the district committee, and brought the wishes 
and opinions of parents to nought. Normal schools, the most 
profitless of all our foreign importations, fatten at the public crib, 
while the honest old academy, robbed of its patronage, stands 
starving by. So, the colleges and universities that are started 
and supported by State and city governments, not only have 
brought no help to the cause of higher education, but, inherit- 
ing the vices of their parentage, have inflicted upon it even a 
stain and a damage. Our worthless agricultural colleges are 
examples of how the interests of education fare when politi- 
cians take them in chaige. Their professors, fathered by a 
lobby, soon grew to be a lobby themselves, and gathered in force 
at Washington, in 1873, to persuade Congress to make an addi- 



CREATIVE FORCES OF THIS SYSTEM. 205 

tion to their unearned salaries. In the President's message to 
Congress that same year, and again in 1877, it was recommended 
that a national bureau be established at the capital to instruct, 
if not to oversee us all, in the education of our children ! No 
farther, surely, could folly go in the application of the paternal 
principle in government 



CHAPTER X. 

CAN THIS SYSTEM BE BROUGHT INTO USE? 

A FINAL topic, and the most important of all, remains : Can 
so great an innovation in democratic methods as is here 
proposed be ever got adopted ? Here is indeed the very touch- 
stone of the merit of this book ; and, unless it can stand the 
criterion, the best use of its pages will but be to line a box. 
This, also, was about the only question that was raised con- 
cerning the scheme by any of the large number of readers 
whose attention it attracted, as published in a brief form some 
half a dozen years ago. " The plan is sound," they nigh unani- 
mously said, " and, if employed, could not fail to work a blessed 
revolution in our politics : but the difficulty is that it can never 
be introduced into use. It is practical, but not practicable." 

Several reasons were given for this despairing view — to the 
sufficiency of no one, nor of all of which I subscribe ; firmly be- 
lieving, as I do, that, if the plan be consonant with nature's 
laws, a better destiny awaits it than to remain, like the devices 
of so many others, a mere paleontological specimen in the 
vast museum of theoretic politics. 

Some of my critics seem to think that the case is hopeless 
because of the undoubted fact that no large community has 
ever yet had a thoroughly well conducted government for any 
long period of time. But this is no sufficient reason for despair. 
Good government cannot be had till the method of its con- 
struction has first been devised. If this is accomplished here, 
we stand on new and enormous vantage-ground, and need not 
be disheartened by all the failures of the past. 

Others are appalled by the seeming magnitude of the change 
that is proposed. It claims to be, indeed, no trifling thing 
in what it undertakes to do. It proposes no mere treatment of 
casualties, or temporizing resort, like current amendments in 



CAN THIS SYSTEM BE BROUGHT INTO USE? 207 

laws and constitutions ; no surface anointment of deep sores, like 
Civil Service Reform ; no " change of place without a change of 
pain," like a party revolution ; -nor soothing syrup for troubled 
patriotism, like statistical displays of the nation's growth in 
numbers, wealth and virtue : — it undertakes to build anew the 
sick man's health by removing him to another sky, where the 
miasms that have sapped his strength and made his complexion 
hideous can never come. But, after all, my whole proposal is 
little more than to discard our present figment of democracy, 
and to print in the statute book what is already the virtual 
law of our political life. The change is great only because it is 
vital. 

Many fear that party politicians will be able to prevent the 
introduction of a system that promises to take away their busi- 
ness. This apprehension is not strange : for so long has 
democracy served in their houses that, like the ancient hero 
twirling a distaff among the women, we understand neither our 
own strength nor the essential feebleness of our oppressors. But 
the hostility of politicians, however earnest it may be, can 
prove no serious obstacle to the adoption of a sounder system 
of government. Their number is comparatively small, their 
talents not very eminent, and their credit bad. We fol- 
low their lead because leaders are absolutely necessary, as 
already fully demonstrated, in all the wider spheres of demo- 
cratic politics, and because our present system of elections pro- 
vides no way for our selecting them ourselves. Their authority 
and false prestige always break down when the popular will is 
aroused and pointed toward a definite object. Thus, in 1861, 
the rank and file of the Whig party at the South, and of the 
Democratic party at the North, deserted their old leaders, 
or forced them into a new course. In Pennsylvania, in 1873, 
as in Illinois a year or two before, the discontentedness of the 
people with the conduct of affairs compelled the calling of a 
constitutional convention, and, despite the opposition of the 
bulk of the politicians of both parties, adopted its recom- 
mendations. Such instances might be multiplied. Indeed it 
may be doubted whether the known opposition of this class of 
men would not aid the introduction of this scheme ; for there 
is no occupation worse thought of than theirs. We obey them, 



208 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

not out of love, but from dependence, and shall gladly shake 
them off our backs whenever the opportunity shall be pre- 
sented. 

Moreover, any promising endeavor toward the reform of 
our politics will have the cordial support of no small share of 
politicians themselves. Their ranks still contain many high- 
minded men who loathe their present base surroundings, and 
will rejoice to see an honest path opened to their ambition. 
There is indeed, no doubt, more virtue among public men than 
recent exhibitions and revelations would seem to show, and 
than we are apt to give them credit for. Even in the proceed- 
ings of the common council of New York, Chicago, Washing- 
ton, Charleston, or any other city, may be discerned an under- 
current of desire to do what is right toward the people, and 
between man and man. Many of our politicians are more 
sinned against than sinning. They are the victims of a false 
system, that is as much a part of our political institutions as 
the federal compact itself. Led into politics by worthy mo- 
tives, they did not foresee through what mire they must tread, 
nor how impossible it would be to keep themselves clean 
amidst it. It is now the most difficult thing in the world for 
a public man to be virtuous. I lay down the broad proposition, 
that no man can follow politics, with a success any way pro- 
portioned to his ability, without doing things at which an en- 
lightened conscience revolts. 

Neither will party spirit be stirred against this reform, as 
some suppose ; for it makes no war upon either party. 

Nor will the enthusiasts of particular policies, such as free 
trade, or liquor prohibition ; for surely it gives them the fair- 
est chance that they ever had, or can have. 

The power of office will not much oppose it ; for office- 
holding is now too brief to concern itself about so remote a 
danger. 

Neither will the press ; for, often as that now lends itself to 
other influences, it is too sensible not to be aware that truth is 
its surest strength, the general welfare its best purveyor, and 
public opinion its richest customer. 

In short, I know not from what quarter much opposition 
to the introduction of this system needs to be feared. 



CAN THIS SYSTEM BE BROUGHT INTO USE? 200, 

But, whoever will not oppose, who will approve and favor 
it ? Will the press, chief minister and organ of public thought ? 
Will the higher intelligence of the country? And, above all, 
will general opinion ? 

The answer to this supremely important inquiry ie no longer 
to me a matter of conjecture. The skeleton of this system, 
and of this discussion of it, has been already published, and 
somewhat extensively circulated. It was the issue of an un- 
known pen and an unknown press, — an estray, as it were, in 
the herd of reputable literature. Nevertheless it awakened 
great interest. It was reprinted almost entire in the Phila- 
delphia Legal Intelligencer, the oldest and perhaps the most 
esteemed of the law magazines of the country, and in several 
periodicals of less conspicuousness. Among the newspapers 
that came under my own observation, it received a column or 
more of comment, almost always highly favorable, from the 
Evening Post and World of New York, the Press of Philadel- 
phia, the Tribune and Times of Chicago, the Cincinnati Times, 
and a good many others less widely known. It drew from no 
small number of distinguished men private letters of apprecia- 
tion and approval. Above all, submitted to several hundreds 
of my neighbors and acquaintances at large — farmers, mechan- 
ics, merchants, laborers and professional men — it found the 
endorsement of general opinion. With nigh unanimous accord 
they said : " This is the very thing we need." 

But the last point deserves a moment's more particular con- 
sideration ; for the reception that the scheme will receive from 
the body of the community must be after all the pivot of its 
success. The people are sometimes charged with indifference to 
the wrongs they suffer : and, indeed, they often seem, like patient 
oxen, to chew the cud of dull content even while they feel the 
lash. When some exhibition of gross incompetence, some out- 
burst of long-festering corruption, or some aggression of official 
power on democratic right, in law, judgment or execution, stirs 
us for a moment, we soon appear to drowse again, soothed with 
lotus of republicanism, and thanking God that, after all, we are 
not as other men. But this is only seeming. An anxious and 
inquiring discontent in fact pervades the whole public mind. 
Some radical change is almost universally felt to be necessary. 



210 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

From every side comes up the cry — as yet in vain — " What shall 
we do to be saved?" Hence the frequent reformed char- 
ters of cities, and the constant succession of constitutional 
conventions, — each new one most often turning out to be 
more incompetent and unprofitable than the last. With 
rare exceptions, men of average intelligence are no longer 
enamored of either party, and are heartily sick of the poli- 
ticians who manage them. They cannot fail to see that 
the welfare of the country is just about as safe, and as 
much perilled, with one party as the other ; and that, while 
the mass of each party is as honest and patriotic as human 
nature admits of, there is in each a bunch of demagogues with 
whom principle and patriotism are but catchwords, and who 
follow politics for gain, but who, nevertheless, under the pres- 
ent system, are the masters of public affairs. The nation is 
ripe for better things, if better things can be devised. Noth- 
ing hinders reform but the lack of a solid method of reform. 
Preparations and facilities unknown before and elsewhere are 
now at hand to the American people for the redemption of 
democracy from its unworthy state. Our mixed stock, already 
proved on so many fields to be more than the equal of any 
other in modern times ; the wide diffusion of the tools and ele- 
ments of knowledge by common schools, and of the spirit of 
inquiry and independent thought by a free press ; the general 
possession by the people in lands and houses of a solid and 
steady interest in the public welfare, — these advantages, added 
to our long experience and constant study of democratic poli- 
tics, supremely qualify us for doing the best that human 
society is capable of doing. 

There is every reason to expect that the average American 
community will welcome this attempt at a correction of our 
political condition as soon as it is made known to them. Its 
principles are no way beyond their comprehension, and its 
chief methods are already familiar to them in the party caucus 
and convention. Everybody must see that the people do 
act, and can act, whether in the selection of high public 
officers or in the direction of high affairs, only through Repre- 
sentative Delegates, such as this system employs. The only 
question is, whether these necessary officers of democracy shall 



CAN THIS SYSTEM BE BROUGHT INTO USE? 211 

continue to be the appointment of self-seeking politicians and 
narrow party idolatry, or shall, by this system, be the fair 
choice of the body of the public will. This dilemma is surely 
comprehensible to the great majority of voters, nor can they 
long hesitate which horn of it to choose. 

Popular ballot, though endeared to us by many proud asso- 
ciations, is to-day but a fascinating fraud. In the arms of this 
Delilah the Samson of democracy has laid his head, while the 
Philistines of politics have shorn him of his locks of beauty and 
strength. They have put out his eyes. They set him daily 
to grind in their mills. Let them beware, and let democracy 
itself beware, lest sometime, if early warning be not taken, 
when, as now, they lead him forth to make them sport, his 
native vigor shall return to him, his mighty hands shall seek 
the pillars of their sacrilegious temples, and politicians and 
people be buried in a common ruin. 

The most that threatens the ready reception of this system 
is the incapacity of the general mind to imagine how much 
more wisely things might be ordered than they now are. So 
constantly has political society failed to bring to its employ 
the highest intelligence and virtue of the age, and so full has 
its career heretofore been of corruption, folly and consequent 
catastrophe, that we have few facts to aid our fancy, and can 
with difficulty help looking upon such evils as a part of the 
order of nature. Imperfect as is our present system, it is per- 
haps about as good as any with which history acquaints us. 
So unsuccessful in the promotion of the common welfare have 
governments generally been that intelligent opinion still doubts 
whether that one is not best which governs least. The reforms 
that we ourselves have tried have quite as often as otherwise 
proved changes for the worse, and when political power has 
undertaken to be paternal and beneficent it has too often 
turned out to be tyrannical and obstructive. So many new 
charters, constitutions and administrations have failed to help 
us that we have got so that we don't believe in any. Besides, 
native sloth, stupidity, and philosophic Epicureanism say : 
" We have got along pretty well in this way a good while ; 
despite the taxgatherer we have enough to eat and drink ; at 
fair and at foul each has an equal chance ; we go our own gait, 



212 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

and there is no man to make us afraid : what better can be ex- 
pected of human nature, or what better desired?" — so do the 
dwellers in some squalid hut, comfortless, disordered, unsafe, 
vermin-haunted and full of quarrel, oft stay content, unknow- 
ing, and incapable to conceive, how sweet a home it is where 
peace, comfort, purity and safety reign, and where the disorders 
that attend bad management can never enter. 

But even this ground of apprehension for the fate of this 
scheme may safely be dismissed in this age of social zeal and 
intellectual stir. A generation and a people that in their 
eagerness for reform and progress spare nothing of the handi- 
work of man, and scarcely the institutions of nature itself, and 
that seem to be especially curious about questions of govern- 
ment, will not fail to study and employ any truths that may 
be here presented. 

But, whatsoever and whosoever holds back, necessity drives. 
Not long can we go on in this way. Already Judge Lynch 
hangs more than Jack Ketch. Already are the bulk of the 
railroad interests of the country so tangled and betrayed by 
the incompetence and corruptness of legislators that neither 
investors nor travellers know their rights, and the courts them- 
selves are dumbfounded. Already scores of municipalities, like 
Providence, Poughkeepsie, Port Jervis, Rahway and Cohoes, 
have been forced by exhausting taxes to abandon for a time 
important functions, such as police, education and the repair 
of streets, — escaping the levies of politicians by a return toward 
anarchy and barbarism. As things are going, the day threat- 
ens to be near when half the cities in the land will first be bank- 
rupt, and then delivered over to the sordidness and disorder of 
Canton and Stamboul. Not the legislation of Washington, 
Albany or Springfield can save them from this destiny ; but 
only a true empowerment of general intelligence and purposes, 
which now they wholly lack. 

What more terrible evils are in store for us it would be 
venturesome to predict. The calamities of nations have sel- 
dom been foreseen. One source of enormous peril, however, 
may be mentioned as patent to every eye. I mean disputed 
elections. Already important communities have been held 
back from civil war on this account only by the federal arm. 



CAN THIS SYSTEM BE BROUGHT INTO USE? 213 

But when this authority itself shall be questioned, as is threat- 
ened at every presidential election, there will be no higher 
power to keep the peace. Nothing can secure us from this 
supreme calamity but the system of elections that is here set 
forth, and which, excluding fraud, and rendering uncertainty 
impossible, leaves no room for such contention. 

These urgent dangers have already prepared the people to 
seize resolutely upon any means of escape from them. Es- 
pecially are property owners, who, fortunately, compose the 
bulk of the nation both in power and in numbers, alarmed at 
the growth of taxation, and eager to strike a blow at the 
pauper politicians that cause it. 

Thus I base my confidence that this system can be put into 
use in this country (1) on the generally admitted necessity of 
something being done, (2) on the competency of the people 
to appreciate the remedy that I propose, and (3) on their ability 
to avail themselves of it whether politicians will or no. 

I do not look to see it tried first on any large scale, such as 
in the government of the Union, or of the State of New York, 
— although the wider the sphere of its operation the more 
marked will its logical benefits be. It must creep at first, like 
all the worthiest children of time. Some small State like Connec- 
ticut or New Jersey, or, more likely, some of the many muni- 
cipalities which now fathom the lowest depths of misrule, will 
probably be the pioneer in this reform. Fortunately, not only 
can any single State try it by an alteration of its constitution, 
but by legislation alone it can authorize a city to try it, — at 
least in New York, and in most of the other States. 

So far so good. But, granted that the virtuousness and 
necessity of this system will be appreciated, that the times are 
opportune, and that nothing serious stands in the way, in what 
manner and by what means, can it be set in actual opera- 
tion ? The answer is easy. This must be done just as all 
other political and social reforms, such as the repeal of the 
corn-laws in Old England, and the outlawry of the liquor traffic 
in New, have been ; that is, by the personal endeavors of its 
friends. The speculations of the brain are vain without the 
helping hand. 

If this system of political construction should be accepted as 



214 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

sound by the intelligence of the generation no fear needs to be 
entertained but what active efforts will be made to compel its 
introduction into use. The initiatory movements in this behalf, 
and the conduct of the whole campaign, like everything else 01 
worth that was ever wrought for society, will be the special 
business of the few whom nature has appointed to great em- 
ployment. 

The kind of work that will have to be done to promote the 
introduction of this new device is familiar to all men practiced 
in democratic politics. Public interest must be awakened, and 
public opinion instructed on the subject through the press, by 
newspaper, pamphlet and handbill. Then public meetings 
must be called, to collect its friends and show them how nu- 
merous they are ; to stimulate effort by sympathy and dis- 
cussion ; to awaken the courage of fellowship, the spirit of 
party, and the proselyting ambition of human nature. Then 
organization must be had ; for, though the whole world of 
thought should applaud, and every fireside become its school, 
no human cause can ever triumph without that vital aid. 
Finally, all these influences and powers must be brought to 
bear upon the selection and support at the polls of a proper 
representative in the State legislature, or at whatever other 
seat of authority the law may make it necessary to appeal. 
By the custom of the legislature of New York such a modifica- 
tion of the charter of any of the numerous minor cities of that 
commonwealth as would be necessary to introduce this system 
would be granted, as a matter of course, at the mere request of 
its representatives ; or, at most, with the single condition of a 
subsequent approving vote by the people. 

In this undertaking there may be delays and interruptions 
from adverse influences ; but, the cause once become the ob- 
ject of popular interest and endeavor, the opposition of parties, 
politicians, or anything else, though momentarily successful, 
will but throw it back for a better collection of its strength. 
All along it will have, over partisan, personal and sentimental 
questions, the advantage that it is catholic, democratic and 
solid, and that it is stirred without other possible purpose than 
the common welfare of political society. 

Put in practice in any one community, this system will be 



CAN THIS SYSTEM BE BROUGHT INTO USE? 21 5 

its own sufficient apostle, and will quickly spread from city to 
city, from State to State, and to the Federal centre itself. 

Its progress will be aided by this, that in any municipal 
government, for example, where it may be employed, the body 
of Electors, as enjoying the confidence and fairly representing 
the ideas of the majority of the community, may properly sug- 
gest to their constituents, as they doubtless will, candidates for 
the State legislature, the federal congress, the custom-house 
or the post-office, even before the system has been incorporated 
into either the State or the federal constitution. These nom- 
inations can hardly fail to get more support from the people, 
and more favor from any high appointing authority, than those 
which politicians may make in party convention or by private 
letter. Thus missionaries of the new Gospel will be sent forth 
from its cradle among the heathen, till at last all the kingdoms 
of the earth shall be gathered under its banners of harmony. 

But nothing can be accomplished here, any more than any- 
where else, without sacrifice. Who are they that will incur the 
labor, trouble, and expense that the experiment of this system 
will necessarily involve ? No difficulty need be apprehended 
here. I look to see a syndicate of intelligent patriotism formed, 
sometime and somewhere, to put the matter on the market 
of public opinion. The country is full of men eager to toil 
and spend in some good cause. If not the most abundant, 
public spirit is certainly the most wasted of commodities. 
One hundredth part of what is annually given to found obser- 
vatories and universities that are not wanted, to help imbue 
Yale, Harvard and Princeton with the rot of luxury and pride, to 
support and propagate a religion that Heaven itself is taking 
the best possible care of, to secure to unthrift, idleness and im- 
potence the comfortable things that, by nature's wise intention, 
should be enjoyed only by prudence, industry and vigor, and 
in other the like misguided generosities, would abundantly, 
secure this system a trial, and build for the investors a monu- 
ment to outlast the pyramids. There is public spirit enough 
in New York City to make it the navel of modern civilization, 
if only a right constitution of politics would give it opportu- 
nity. No honest and sensible undertaking for the betterment 
of affairs anywhere lacks active and self-sacrificing supporters. 



2l6 THE COMMONWEALTH RECONSTRUCTED. 

Surely, since the civil war, no man need fear that patriotism is 
dead in this country, either among the common people, the 
wealthy or the cultivated. Every issue of the daily newspaper, 
in letters from the people, reports of public meetings for the 
correction of abuses, and tl'e like, demonstrates a wide-spread 
zeal for the public welfare, so flaming that oft-repeated failures 
cannot smother it. Surely a method of reform that seems to 
reach the bottom of our difficulties will not fail to gather to its 
support a crowd of volunteers. 

Even as a business enterprise the undertaking to introduce 
this system will pay. In every one of our cities there are men 
who, for the mere saving of taxes, could well afford the cost of 
making known the plan to every voter, organizing its converts, 
and securing its introduction. 

Not only will patriotism, benevolence and self-interest come 
to its aid, but great ambition also, which now is pretty much 
shut out from public life by the thick abatis of fraud, intrigue 
and indirection which Political Organization has set to guard 
its approaches. 

From every quarter, indeed, help may safely be looked for 
in the furtherance of this system. Old age will make a contri- 
bution, so as to leave behind it an improved political inherit- 
ance ; middle life, to secure its now anxious estate ; and youth 
to prepare for itself a fairer career. Capital, labor, and enter- 
prise, all now robbed, misguided or impeded, the wisdom of 
the few now balked, and the desires of the many so often fruit- 
less in their just aims, will all gather to its aid. 



THE END. 



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